


One More Trip (I)

by sasha_t



Series: One More Trip [1]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Horses, Partnership
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-09 08:03:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4340549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_t/pseuds/sasha_t
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Tommy's little community isn't the answer to Ellie and Joel's situation. People are people, they'll do pretty much what they've always done.</p><p>Companion piece: <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4340054">Nettles</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Brennon or Speedo

“Joel, can I talk to you?”

He looked up from the workbench, putting the grinding stone down. It was his turn to sharpen all the blades: hunting knives, kitchen knives, machetes, axes, switchblades. There was a big pile on the floor. A smaller pile was slowly growing to his right. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and nodded.

“Shouldn't you be in school?”

“Yeah, it's lunch time. Mr. Harran is sick again.”

“Let's eat, then. Whatcha got?”

“What you packed for me this morning, duh! Who knows what peril awaits me, I shudder to think.”

“Fancy. Don't reckon your modest lunch'll much titillate your palate, ma'am.”

“We shall see,” she said, slowly opening her lunch box with one eye shut, the other barely open but peeking intently.

Ellie always had lunch with Joel. They'd take turns packing. Once in a while, they'd surprise each other with rare delicacies scrounged up from God knew where, a tradition they'd lovingly kept from the road. These days, the extra treats were getting more scarce. Despite the small chance, Ellie liked to play along each time. Today, though, Joel had outdone himself.

“Wild strawberries! Dude, no way! These are amazing! Joel, man, you gotta tell me where you got 'em. Spill the beans!” Ellie sniffed at them. She knew better than to lunge at them before her sandwich. But, boy, did they look delicious!

Joel huffed lightly. “Now now, an old fart gotta hold on to his secrets, too. How else is he gonna rope in the ladies?”

“Grooooosss! You're not roping in anybody, not with that stinky shirt on. We could wipe out five bloaters with that thing! Remember to have it registered with FEDRA as a lethal weapon. When we get home, you gotta hand it over. Laundry day tomorrow, gotta soak it overnight. And why the hell do you keep putting yourself down like that? That's my job.” 

Ellie bit into her first sandwich with such gusto it made Joel's mouth water painfully. _Mmmm, guy knows his way around an egg salad. Venison's harder to swallow because of that iron taste, but, man, the charred bits are to die for. Bet he'd make an incredible Texas barbecue if he had the right materials and equipment. What the hell is a Texas barbecue, anyway? Do they make it even better than the folks here? Gotta get him to make me one. Maybe we have to go to Texas for that. Cool._

“Did you wanna ask me somethin', Ellie?”

Ever since he told her to give her horse back to Tommy and jump on Callus, his tone with her had been warm and considerate. Sometimes also urgent, other times exhausted, one time on the brink of death, but always caring. That was Joel. _I may be only 16, but I know stuff, old man. Like the fact that you're a supercool dude that no woman wants because of me. Or the fact that you've brought this upon yourself. You stupid idiot. You shoulda left me there. I can't touch you because you might take it the wrong way, and frankly, it is kinda wrong all things considered, not least because you're most likely not immune, but I sure would like to be able to show you just how much you mean to me, you son of a bitch. Only thing I can do is tug at your beard now and then. What. A. Shitty. Space. I'm not even the cure for humanity anymore. All I am is a nobody nobody wants to touch, talk to, or play with. Why the hell do you even want me around?_

An absurdly large ache built up in Ellie's stomach. As she took to doing these days, she asked Joel a random question just to hear his voice.

“Um, yeah, Martha had her foal last night. Do you remember, Maria said I could have it if I took care of it? And when I'm old enough I can ride it out hunting. Dude, I'm old enough NOW. It's Brennon that's gotta catch up. You think she'll keep her word?”

“Brennon, huh? It's a colt, then?”

“Dunno. Speedo?”

“Where in the Sam Hell do you come up with these names? Least it ain't Callus.”

“That was my masterpiece. You just don't know.”

They laughed and drank some of the tea.

“Sooooo?” pressed Ellie.

“So what?”

“Maria. You think she'll give me the horse?”

“Reckon she'll do that. No reason to get your hopes up for nothin'.”

“You think she's capable of breaking a promise.”

“Most anyone'll break a promise if it ain't too important, if there's good enough reason.” 

“Not the most charitable outlook, old man.”

“Not a charitable world, kid.” 

Joel was curious where this was going. Little did he know it was going nowhere fast as far as Ellie was concerned.

Ellie started digging into the wild strawberries. They were very small, but perfectly ripe. Their sweetness and fragrance exploded in her mouth. _Nellie!_ And she had so many of them!!!

“Dude, I could get used to living in this world!” she sighed, swinging her calves as she sat on the workbench beside Joel. He chuckled. It took so little to make her smile. Too bad it never lasted long enough. _What's long enough? Forever._

“Let me do the hunting knives,” she said, jumping down and grabbing the grinding stone.

“Now, you got school, miss. Ain't nothin' here for you to do. B'sides, I've just 'bout had enough of your chatterin' for one day. Go on, scoot.” He pretended to lose interest in order to get her talking. _Whatever it is, she must be achin' to say it._

“Come on, old man, this requires my delicate touch. I'll just do this one, then I'm gone. Cross my kidneys.”

He let her take the knife with the ivory handle. It was her favorite. Whenever her turn to use it came round, her posture straightened and she looked invincible, like that Dr. Daniela Star from her comic books. Actually, it was a pretty decent knife.

“So, I'm thinking, maybe you can build me a stall next to the house? Please?”

The conversation did have a point after all. Even Ellie was surprised. It wasn't what was really bothering her, but it was something. 

“Smooth, kiddo. Real smooth. You better get that notion out of your head right quick, 'cause I ain't buildin' shit next to the house.” Joel couldn't help himself: he grinned and shook his head. She zoomed in on the weakness instantly.

“Didn't you say you used to build things? Houses and stuff? That is a noble profession if there ever was one.”

“That was a long time ago. Not sure I know how to hold a hammer no more.”

“Pfffft. You fixed Buckley's doghouse two weeks ago.”

“Ellie, that was a small job. A horse, well, that's a whole 'nother matter.”

“It's like swimming. It's gotta be. You said it yourself, the important things never leave you, no matter what you're dealing with. You said hope isn't the last to die, it's who you are. That's what you said. Which, by the way, you owe me another swimming lesson. The last one doesn't count.”

“My my, all this convincin' for a horse? And why don't it count?”

“Clickers ruined it. I'm serious, Joel. You gotta build me that stall. I'll help you. I gotta take serious care of that baby horse. Gotta do things by the book right from the start. Dude, seriously, I have to get it to follow me around and obey my every command. You know, like you did with me.” Ellie was only half joking.

Joel understood her much better than she realized. Sometimes he lay awake all night, his chest heavy with worry and remorse, wondering if he'd done the right thing bringing her here. Everyone's polite, but nobody wants her around. _Hell, if they had to choose between her and a deadweight that's not infected, they'd dump her on the spot. She must be so lonely, poor kid. Right about now, her teenage body is hollerin' and screamin' for all sorts of things I can't provide for her. She knows very well she can't risk anybody's life, so she stays away and keeps to herself. No complaints. Always ready with a joke, always ready to learn, to lend a hand. Never afraid of work. Got such a big heart, that kid. They'd cut her loose, no second thoughts. And she knows it. Nothin' she'll ever do for this place'll ever be good enough. Tommy and Maria may be different, but I can't vouch for them, either. Can't say I blame these folks. She can still turn. Or she can infect somebody. They got a right to feel safe._

“Kid, tell you what. You seal the deal with Maria, and I'll build you that damn stall. How's that sound?”

Ellie almost choked on a berry.

“Really? Oh, man...” Her freckled face lit up like it was going to draw every hunter for miles around. She dropped everything, came round to Joel and hugged him hard.

“Easy, baby girl, you gonna squeeze the livin' daylights outta me,” he huffed. He held her tight, planting small kisses on the crown of her head. Suddenly, he felt her sob violently against his stomach.

“Honey, what's the matter?” He lifted her chin, but she wouldn't look up. “Baby, talk to me. What is it?” Joel's heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was about to break loose from his rib cage.

“Nothing.”

Ellie wanted to tell him. _I wish you were young so we can hit the road and spend the rest of our lives together in freedom. I wish you were immune so I wouldn't have to walk on eggshells around you all the time. I wish we could love each other the way we were meant to. If that includes sex, then cool. If not, that's cool too. Dude, I'm not as horny as you think._

_It ain't possible._

_I know. Not a charitable world, eh, Joel?_

_No, ma'am. But I do love you, Ellie. By now I think you know what that means._

_I know._

_Alright, then. Maybe when the horse is ready, I'll still have one more trip in me. You in?_

_I'm in. Just promise me one thing._

_Shoot._

_You'll never leave me._

_Can't promise you that, kiddo. My days are numbered. You know that._

_Promise me._

_I promise._

_Swear to me._

_I swear._

\---

Harran is the city where the game Dying Light is set. Love that game to bits, so I thought I'd randomly throw the name in here.


	2. Payment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things become unpleasant. Joel does some unexpected things.

The sound of an arrow being released through the crisp winter air. The entire clearing covered in fresh snow.

The magnificent buck gave a low, muted cry, its bulky body faltering on its spindly legs, then fell with a thud at the end of a blood-speckled trail. 

Joel approached the animal. A translucent mist was still forming around its moist nostrils. Breathe, breathe. The steady, regular heaving of its rib cage began to slow. Taking out his hunting knife, Joel made a small incision in its neck, quickly releasing what was left of its blood to the white expanse. He then pulled the arrows from its body, examining the flint carefully, to check whether or not they could be reused. When the buck was no longer moving, he started to carve.

The were two piles of buck parts slowly growing, one to his left, another to his right. The one on the right was his appointed portion of the kill. As he was about to detach the second front leg from the shoulder socket, he heard the other man crumpling the snow behind him, sled in tow. Joel turned around and nodded.

“This one's got meat on 'im.”

The other man's name was Joshua Stewart. He was Maria's second cousin, had been there when Maria and her father started the settlement. Before the outbreak, he had been an Air Force pilot, and afterwards, a Firefly in Tommy's outfit. Decent guy, by all accounts. Fair trader, reliable fighter. Also smart. He knew the ins and outs of ambush tactics, had designed a draconian trap system for defending the settlement. Had a wife and two kids about Ellie's age. People here looked up to him, including Joel. Even Tommy followed his advice on many things.

He was also Joel's only hunting partner of late. There had been quite a few pair-ups over the 15 months since Joel and Ellie came to live here, but through trial and error, these two men had found that their respective styles meshed well. He was the one guy, apart from Tommy, who Joel felt he could depend on in a brawl, skill-wise. Hunters were becoming more desperate, more ingenious. It was mostly Joel and Joshua that kept them at bay. He was also the only guy, apart from Tommy, who would never try anything funny with Ellie even if she weren't a carrier.

They'd take turns bringing home the best cuts of meat from whatever creature they happened to down in the forests north of the dam. This time, Joshua got the loin, rib, chuck and round. Joel got the legs, flank, plate and head.

“Listen,” Joshua said, standing over Joel, who was still kneeling by the dismembered carcass, arranging and rearranging the two piles like a seasoned tourist packing a suitcase full of souvenirs that wouldn't fit into each other no matter what. The two men each had brought a length of parachute cloth about 7 feet by 9 and about 20 feet's worth of climbing rope. All the meat would be carefully wrapped in the fabric, tied and hoisted onto the sled. The two men would then pull the sled back to the settlement.

“Yeah?” Joel said, huffing from the strain. _Why isn't he lendin' a hand? He hardly shot his bow today. Out of sorts, I reckon. We all have one of those days._

“I saw you had canned peaches. Could you give me a can? Susan's birthday's coming up.”

“Sure thing,” murmured Joel, without skipping a beat. _How does he know about the peaches? He ain't even talkin' of tradin'._ His body was already tense, exactly like it used to become whenever he sensed hunters behind rusty cars waiting to pounce. Joshua must have picked up on Joel's uneasiness, because he started talking.

“Uh, sorry for... I didn't mean to spy on you or anything. I was just on my way to the generator when I walked by your home and happened to see you in the kitchen fishing out a can of peaches from that backpack of yours. We don't have much of that stuff left. My sons are growing, they eat most of anything we manage to get our hands on...”

 _Now that's a lie. I know for a fact he's got more than enough to tide him and his over till spring. I was there when he made that haul. Not like him to forget who saw what. Maybe he don't care._ Joel felt bad for thinking such things.

Meanwhile, Joshua was sounding oddly unapologetic, as if he was going to get that can of peaches with or without a nice story to go with his unexpected assault on Joel's sense of decency.

“That's okay,” said Joel, pretending not to have heard anything out of the ordinary. _That's how it is, then. For more than a year, you've been hearin' and seein' how I've given away stuff to keep the peace and protect Ellie. You haven't said anythin', haven't stood up for us even though I've done everythin' you've asked. I used to think you were just tryin' to avoid creatin' tension, figured you relied on me to understand the situation and keep quiet. And now you're doin' it, too._

He had forgotten how bitter betrayal tasted, mostly because after the first few slaps on the face during the early days of the outbreak, he'd only let his heart thaw out twice, with Niamh* and Ellie. He'd never let his guard down with others, not even Tommy or Tess. With Joshua, it wasn't so much personal affection as the effect Ellie was having on him generally. Simply knowing that she was by his side, watching out for him, genuinely caring for him in that tomboyish, awkward way of hers, trusting him implicitly with everything, even his decision to save her from the Fireflies, had taken the rough edges off of him. He would never be completely comfortable swapping pleasantries with strangers, and he would most certainly not let anyone close other than Ellie, but he wasn't as quick to suspect foul play as he had been in the Boston QZ. His instincts and intuition were still razor-sharp as ever, but he found himself less and less motivated to identify the bad feeling in his gut as danger. He felt himself slowly reverting to the somewhat naive, idealistic Joel he had been as a young father.

Nowadays, he frequently found himself gazing at the clouds, wondering what it would be like to live up there. _You'd have to survive on little oxygen. Resistance to UV light'd also help. That flat one right there'd make a great patio. Fire up the barbecue, open a cold bottle of Corona. Wonder what the thin air'd to to a guitar's acoustics. Ellie was talkin' 'bout the clouds of Neptune. Maybe that blue color's firm enough to build a grand ol' mansion for us..._

He snapped back. The sting of betrayal, compounded by the fact that he suddenly remembered asking Joshua about the view up there, quickly ripened and fell as disgusted acceptance.

“Come by tomorrow,” said Joel, hoping that the thing he was carrying in his backpack at that moment wouldn't have the same fate. _Nobody knows about it; gotta make sure Ellie don't tell nobody._

The moment Ellie heard Joel's unmistakable footsteps – deliberate, firm, centered – on the four wooden steps to their front door, she tapped the baby horse's jet-black mane lightly, dropped the pitchfork with a cloud of hay still wrapped around its prongs and skipped over the red manure bucket out of the stall and into the winter in front of the house. _He's going in to get the cleaver._ Eager to help Joel unload his catch, she expertly eased him out of his backpack straps as he was crossing the threshold to the house, went back out to the yard and went to work on the knots. 

“Hi!” she yelled breathlessly. “Man, these knots are tight! What'd you do, melt the rope with a flamethrower?”

Joel came out with the meat cleaver in his hand. He was frowning, deep in thought. _Here we go again. Now I have to wait, like, a week for you to come out with it. Meanwhile, gotta cheer you up, old man, whether you like it or not._ He silently helped Ellie undo all the knots, then went to the wood stump near the front gate. He took from Ellie one piece of the animal at a time and chopped it into manageable bits. She took back the cuts and made small piles in the snow: bones, knuckles, meat for stew, meat for soup, meat for grinding. _Actually, you'd have to use a microscope to find the meat._

"Hey Joel." Joel looked up. "I see you." She was holding the buck's eyes in front of hers, pupils facing him.

She put every pile into its huge plastic organizer and took it to the basement. They had set it up so that one corner functioned like a freezer and another like a regular refrigerator. The thing only worked in the winter months, though. And then there was the head. Joel chopped off the snout, careful to leave the tongue intact. Skinning and prepping the head was her job now. At least, until she got over the thrill. He had shown her once, and now she could cook a mean pot of buck head soup blindfolded.

“Livvie's gonna be a badass, Joel, I'm telling you. You should see how she trots, like a real pro,” she was telling him, dipping the wooden spoon into the boiling broth for a quick taste. The filly was thriving under Ellie's conscientious care. She fed it good hay, as much as the little thing wanted, sometimes even more than Joel could procure for her. _Kid's workin' her ass off, buyin' that stuff for God knows how much._

She had named her horse Olivia, after the Kalamata olives she'd had once in her life – a gift from Joel on their way to the University of Eastern Colorado -, and which she wouldn't stop raving about.

“Duuuude, look at that gorgeous brown color! Joel, do you see how shiny her coat is?” She was leading the tiny filly into the stall, ecstatic. He could tell that some of it had to do with how happy she was with the new stall. It still smelled of freshly cut timber.

“Sure do. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it's as almost as shiny as a Kalamata.” Teasing her about those olives was shifty business, but he couldn't help himself.

She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at him.

“You're a fucking genius!”

“I am?”

“This is Olivia! Of course!”

Careful not to yank too much at the lead, she nudged Olivia toward the bed of hay. 

_“Olivia.” Thank the mighty Lord above!_

“There. Hey you,” she murmured, petting the little one, her voice silken, eyes sparkling with wonder. Like all babies do, Olivia nodded and shook her head at the same time.

Joel watched Ellie ladle the steaming-hot soup into two large bowls. _Not a wife's hands. No, that girl won't make anyone a wife. A survivor's hands. A survivor, much more than I ever was. She'll never let her spirit die._

As Joel handed Joshua the can of peaches in the kitchen next day, he saw in the man's face the future: _Pay, and we'll let you stay for now._

As soon as the front door closed on Joshua's satisfied gait, Joel turned to Ellie, a dead-serious look on his face.

“You still got that polar fleece?”

“Yeah, what's up?” Ellie perked up. _Another new thing. Cool!_

“We're gonna cover the windows.”

“With polar fleece?” Seeing Joel impatiently traverse all the rooms of the house, going from one window to another, looking out from all angles like a caged beast, Ellie took care not to sound too that's-a-dumb-idea-ish.

“We have enough for all the windows?” _How in the name of Jesus did this happen? Was it somethin' I did?_

“Dude, we have three bales. Each is 5 feet wide by who knows how long.” _He knows this already. What's going on?_

“Bring the scissors.” Joel's voice was dangerously low.

After they were done covering every inch of flat glass, Ellie bumped her forehead against a shelf trying to put the scissors, hammer and nails back in the drawer. She groped for a while in the dark. After a good two minutes, she managed to light a short, chubby candle and put it on the coffee table.

“Ellie, now listen good,” said Joel, firmly holding her shoulder while pointing a finger in the air. “No more guests. Keep those things in the windows at all times. Nobody's gonna see inside this house. Yeah?”

At this point, Joel would normally have that us-against-them look in his green eyes that usually ended up with his arm around the neck of a desperately flailing hunter. This time, though, Ellie saw hurt there more than anything. It upset her even more when he realized he'd probably given her an unnecessary scare and stroked her cheek, a faint smile on his dry lips.

“Everythin's fine, squirt. Nothin' to worry 'bout.”

She knew better than to ask. _What if we want to air out the place? What if we want to see if it's sunny or cloudy? What if we want to look at the magnolia tree out back? What if we want to check out the UFOs? What the hell's going on?_ Instead, she gave him the most comforting “Okay” that she could muster. 

___

*For more on Niamh, please read _Nettles_. :)


	3. The Ailing King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reason behind the weird behavior of the folks at Tommy's is revealed. Things turn dark.

Ellie was holding her palms against Olivia's silky black mane, tears stinging her eyes. Like she always did when she came home from school, she first went into the stall to check on her trusty pal, to talk to her. Olivia seemed to understand every word Ellie said.

“She did it again, Livvie... Today it was those Jak goggles you love so much...”

It was April, almost her birthday. Ever since she and Joel covered the windows of the house, her schoolmates had been asking to borrow stuff from her. It never came back. At first, it was an eraser here, a colored chalk there. She figured it wouldn't hurt to play nice in a small community like this. It actually made her happy to be able to help. And it reminded her a lot of the MPS back in Boston, those tight corridors, the crowded mess hall, the dorm rooms with sometimes up to six bunks. No privacy, no hope of keeping anything to oneself, everyone knew what you had, and everyone wanted to “borrow” it. Forever. She didn't mind so much, it was actually amusing sometimes. The only thing she'd held on to was the Walkman Riley had given her. Riley was missing since two weeks before. _That girl'd better find that Walkman here when she comes back. Then I can tear her head off for leaving without telling me._

So it happened that Ellie got that scar on her right eyebrow defending her right to personal property. Pat Russell, a senior, had stolen the Walkman from her room while she was blowing her lungs out into a gross-looking mannequin in First Aid II. Pat, the senior bully, the bully to end all bullies. Double chin from all the snacks she had extorted on campus, beady eyes darting left and right in search of prey, towering frame, flat chest, hairy legs and a perfectly hairy mole on the tip of her nose. Perpetually reeking of ammonia. If she had been a nice sort of person, Ellie would have considered her the supercoolest girl on campus, just like when you love your pug because it's adorably ugly. It was Pat's murky heart that made her body unbearable to look at. 

Only imagining those oily ogress fingers groping the things in her room, stuffing her shiny Walkman into that baggy, flabby, crumb-infested pocket, made her shudder. One night, Ellie strapped on her backpack – _Like fucking John Rambo, ladies!_ \- and made her way to the senior dorm in the east building. She knew the ogress would be in a drunken stupor in one of the rooms of the junior dorm, the one precisely below hers. As soon as she reached Pat's room, a foul odor stung her nostrils. Quickly retrieving the Walkman, which had been carelessly tossed on the desk, Ellie made for the door. _Mission accomplished! Wait, shall we make this more... what's the word... experimental?_ She found Pat's wooden arrows and broke them. Then she took all the ammo she could find – _What the hell is this shell casing for? Never mind, I'll ask Winston._ \- and stuffed it into her backpack. _Climb down the drain pipe, crouch-walk along the hedge to the comm room, wait for staff sergeant Sally the Belly to go on her coffee break, climb through the window and leg it back to my room. Easy peasy._

And everything would have been if she hadn't stumbled on an old, disused gas pipe sticking out from the ground. As her head hit the asphalt a few feet from Sally's turned back, the recon end of a broken bottle slashed her eyebrow. 

“FUCK!”

Her head was spinning.

Ellie stopped up the oozy slit above her eye with one hand and her open mouth with the other. She rolled quickly toward the wall underneath the window of the comm room. Above, she could hear old Sally get up from her creaky chair and lean out. The only thing to be heard was the electrical tension in the lamp post casting a blinding white light somewhere along the fence.

"Goddammit. I'm hallucinating again. Where's my weed?”

Sally leaned back and started rummaging through her filing cabinet. Ellie climbed in, blood dripping along the right side of her face, on the window sill, on Sally's chair, on her desk, on the wooden floor, pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat... Realizing the red trail would be a dead give-away, Ellie pulled up her tank top as high as it would go and bunched it up forcefully against her gushing eyebrow. She made it to her room in three breaths, her nipples stiff from the cool midnight breeze wafting through the corridor.

Next morning, the MPS was in turmoil. Pat had beaten the crap out of her roommate Irene, her sous-bully.

In this town, though, there was beautiful Morgan Simms. She was top of the class in everything. _How the hell can she remember word for word the soliloquy in Hamlet? Why??? She can't solve the math problems, but she knows by heart all the formulas, and that's enough to earn her an A+. Such bullshit._ Everything except Survival III. That was Ellie's turf. Mr. Harran was teaching that class, but he'd been away from the life outside the settlement for so long that his techniques were ridiculously outdated with regard to the newer behavior that the stalkers were exhibiting. “The Hundredth Monkey Effect,” he had called it helplessly, while Ellie showed him and the entire class a particularly effective way to topple a stalker from behind. 

Morgan's deep blue eyes flashed with endless hatred for Ellie. After the business with the polar fleece drapes in November, Morgan, like many others, began taking things from Ellie. They were growing more and more brazen. Today she took Ellie's most prized possession: the Jak & Daxter goggles. 

“Livvie, what am I gonna tell Joel...,” she sobbed. It felt stupid to cry over a piddling thing like that. _They're pink, for Pete's sake!_ It wasn't the first gift from Joel that Ellie misplaced or had to throw away in a pinch. But there was something about that pair of goggles, the way that old guy climbed a humongous tree to get it, huffing and cussing among the quivering branches. When he handed her the goggles, it was like he handed her his heart.

The pun books were gone, too. So was her beloved Naughty Dog T-shirt, the one with the camo pattern and the white paw on the front. And the rad set of Pilot Frixion gel pens Joel had given her for Christmas. Notebooks, crayons, a protractor, her set of Savage Starlight comic books, two pocket knives...

Why had she given them away? She took her cue from Joel. He was doing pretty much the same thing, only on a grander scale: meat, ammo, hard labor. Something was clearly up. All she knew for now was that Craig, who took her Pilots, was the son of Joel's hunting buddy. _Gotta make sure Mr. Stewart has Joel's back. Why isn't Joel hunting with Tommy, by the way?_ Marcus, who took her T-shirt, was Craig's younger brother. Morgan was the daughter of the town doctor, Mrs. Simms. _Gotta make sure Mrs. Simms gives Joel the best care._ She took from Ellie the fancier stuff: her University of Oxford notebooks, her Buff scarf, the magnificent Korean hair pin she wore when she secretly put up her hair in a bun. _Fuck, why did she have to pass by at exactly the moment I was having my bath in the backyard? And now those stupid goggles she'll never wear._

“Maybe I should tell him. What do you think, Livvie?” Ellie was rubbing Olivia's forehead like it was Aladdin's lamp.

Joel found her all cried out and standing listlessly beside Olivia.

“Ellie, what's the matter?” he almost yelled, taking her hands in his.

Before she could answer, Maria came bursting into the stall.

“Joel! Thank God you're both here. I need your help!”

“What happened?” His stomach turned inside out spewing acid, like it took to doing these days whenever things threatened to go south.

“Not here. Come with me.” Maria was already out of the stall and running. Joel and Ellie followed her back to her and Tommy's house at the other end of town. Maria opened the door to the master bedroom. There was Tommy, lying on the bed, shaking, sweat covering his forehead. He was paler than death.

“Jesus Chri...,” Joel whispered, rushing over to the bedside. Tommy's breathing was irregular, he was drifting in and out of consciousness. “How long has he been like this?” 

“Since about five yesterday afternoon.”

“Why didn't you come get me then?”

“Tommy told me he didn't want you to see him like this. He said you've got more than enough on your plate. He was mumbling about knowing things, I don't know what he meant.”

“What about Doc Simms?”

“I have a feeling it's her fault.”

Joel and Maria looked at each other.

“Tell me,” said Joel.

“Let's go to the kitchen. You need to sit down. I need to sit down.”

Silently, Maria headed for the cupboard to fetch the tea pot and dried linden flowers. Her hands were shaking so violently that Ellie took over the tea. The woman sat at the kitchen table, her breath that high-pitched hiss you let out right before you start crying.

“He's the love of my life, Joel,” she said.

Joel put his hand on hers. “I know.”

“People say this all the time, but he and I really are soul mates. If I lose him, I'm just gonna put a bullet through my head.”

“Easy, easy, Maria, he ain't leavin' you. He ain't that kinda guy.”

“You know, I was supposed to marry Michael.”

“Michael Robinson?” said Joel incredulously.

“Weird, huh? My dad and his dad were best friends. The toughest, most feared hunters in the North. They did savage things together, Joel. Right before Mr. Robinson died, he made my dad promise that he'd make me marry his son. And I was going to. Not a whole lot of guys to choose from. Then I met Tommy, and that was that. My dad died angry and full of guilt. Not because he'd killed so many people, but because he broke that promise.”

Maria caught her breath. She stared in front of her, tears in her eyes. After a while she continued.

“Did you know that more than half the folks in this town are my relatives? Uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces. If you count the other people my family saved, it's almost the entire settlement. All of them former hunters or Fireflies. You, Ellie and Tommy are three of the dozen or so people that have no life-debts to the grand old clan.”

Ellie poured the tea into mugs and put them on the table. She sat next to Maria, looking at her intently.

“Everybody hated Tommy the instant I introduced him, they still do. They found out he'd been both a hunter and a Firefly, and I made up stories of how brutal he could be. That was the only way I could think of to keep him safe. It worked. I made up stories about you and Ellie, too. I'm sorry.”

Maria took a sip from her steaming mug. 

_Maria, you can't imagine the things I've done. Whatever you told'em, it's the Disney version._

“Around August last year, Tommy started feeling unwell. He...” The woman was too embarrassed to continue.

“He what? It's okay, Maria, whatever it is, you can trust me, you know that,” said Joel. He suddenly forgot the disappointment, the fact that Tommy'd given Joel and Ellie that house all the way at the other end of town to live in, that he'd grown somewhat distant over the winter, that he no longer seemed willing to go out hunting and fishing with him.

“Whenever he goes number two, blood comes out.”

“God...” Joel knew what that meant. His chest cramped up like it used to when he was looking out for Tommy and himself right after the outbreak. His baby brother. The one he used to babysit when their parents were away. The one he taught to read, to count, to ride a motorcycle. To treat women and kids kindly. He suppressed his desperation with a brutality even he rarely employed.

“We went to Doc Simms. She gave us some herbs and tinctures, prescribed a strict regimen. He seemed to get better. The bleeding was less, he got some color back in his cheeks. Then yesterday she came by to check on him and gave him something to drink. About half an hour after she left, Tommy had a seizure. Convulsions, non-stop shaking... He's a lot better now.”

“But why?” murmured Joel, enraged.

“I'm guessing it's because Mr. Robinson saved her life once. It's all speculation, mind you. I've no proof. But I know how these people think. It's a closed community, has been for more than a decade. It screws with your mind.”

"Why now? She coulda done this at any time."

"I wish I knew."

“Forgive me, Maria, but if this is true, it's worse than the mob.”

“Some of these people belong in a mental asylum. Heck, most of them. My dear family..." Maria shook her head. "You two are the only ones I can trust. You've no idea the sleepless nights, hatching up new schemes to keep Tommy in power. He doesn't know. I begged him to take us out of here, but he kept saying, They'll come around, Our kids are gonna grow up safe and healthy, You deserve a better life than on the road, You've got a good thing going here, a model for the whole world. Some model. Ask Ellie how many of her schoolmates know the alphabet. How many know the multiplication table. How many enjoy torturing animals for sport. It's a mess, Joel. They seem so nice on the outside, don't they?”

Joel nodded. It all made sense. “And now that Tommy looks like he's about to kick the bucket, the gloves come off.”

“Yes. I'm so sorry about this. In a way, I was incredibly selfish letting you two stay. I thought having you here would strengthen Tommy's position. And it did, until this happened.”

_Oh, I don't think I strengthened anybody's position. Just keepin' afloat. If you knew the people I've had to buy off... But now ain't the time._

Ellie spoke. “Um, I don't know if it's my place to butt in, but I knew a guy in the Boston QZ who pooped blood. He was about Tommy's age, I think, around 40, 45. They said it was colon cancer.”

Maria nodded, staring into her cup. Her jaw started to shake; she broke down crying.

“He got better, though. I know the cure.”

Both Joel and Maria looked at Ellie. Breathless silence. Then Maria smiled through her tears and reached out to Ellie, gently pushing a lock of red hair behind the girl's ear.

“There's no cure for cancer, honey. Gotta check on Tommy, be right back.”

\---

When I reread the chapter, I realized Pat Russell is, in a nutshell, Miss Trunchbull from the movie _Matilda_. :D


	4. Grandmothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel and Ellie start working on the cure for Tommy. Their thoughts need sorting out, and I'm not about to do it for them. ;)

“God, I hope this works,” mumbled Joel, taking some time out between nettle bushes. The frown that had seized his forehead the day before, when he saw Tommy supine and laboring for every breath, had spread and burnt itself into his whole face, like a map that kept growing with each new territory discovered. In how many ways can a man feel pain? He stroked his beard in defeat.

 _“Come on, big guy.”_ That's what Tess used to tell Joel as she bent down to pull him up from the jowls of infected hell, offering him her slender, tanned arm to climb with. The moment Joel jumped and grabbed Tess's wrist for the first time in the Goldstone building, Ellie realized that the woman, Joel's smuggling partner, was made of pure steel and little else. So different from the heroines of the novels she'd been plowing through. Pride and Prejudice. Sense and Sensibility. These stories were so incredibly odd to Ellie. Not just the language, but the characters as well. She only read them on Joel's recommendation. _“Read those and you'll get where I come from. I'm doin' stuff that'll send me straight to hell as it is, lettin' you do all the stuff you've been doin' ain't helpin',”_ he'd said one day, when Ellie had pushed too far asking for the millionth time to go out hunting with him. 

_LETTING me do? You're LETTING me? Dream on, Mr. Darcy._ But she couldn't help wondering how much of a stretch this was for Joel, living like this, the women as fierce as the men, as sex-crazed and as blunt about it. And Tess. Had Tess abandoned parts of her self to be with Joel? Had she had to choose between being a woman and being Joel's partner? Ellie thought that, basically, women were just like men, but with a different anatomy. Or maybe there was more to it? Had Tess and Joel been intimate? She was sure they had been at some point. But what did it mean to them? Somehow, she didn't feel comfortable prying, even in thought, but she wondered anyway.

For Joel and Tess, living might have been very different from what she'd imagined. _I'm pretty sure you wanted to give Tess a world where she could be both. And then she died. And you got stuck with me. A kid who knew nothing about the real world, who was so small you had to look after her constantly._ Although Ellie had proven herself every bit as self-reliant and resourceful as Tess had been, she still felt inadequate. Seeing him haunted by his old unspoken pain was more than Ellie could endure. She swallowed hard, trying to steady the voice that was about to convey thoughts not entirely hers.

“It's gotta work. I mean, it worked once, right?” _Thin, very thin._ With a grunt, Ellie removed a heavy rock to reveal a colony of ash-colored lichens. Her knife poking gingerly at some rotten wood, she carefully dislodged the base of the alien-looking things and placed them in her basket.

“More like the same miracle don't come knockin' twice.” Joel gave the longest, most tortured sigh Ellie had ever heard coming out of him. She couldn't help smiling. _Jesus, I'm rotten. How can I be enjoying this?_ It was his vulnerability, his passiveness about it. It seemed so unlike Joel, and yet so exactly like him. He needed help, but he'd never push too hard, not with her. She found this side of him incredibly endearing. Not the kind of endearing where you can't keep your hands off the person. It went beyond that. 

“Relax, cranky toes. Who gave you all those medkits when we were on the road? Who gave you stuff to drink?”

“Ellie, that was... You found those.”

“Shows how much you know.” _Dude, I was the best student in First Aid. I was gonna be a field medic, like my mom was a nurse. I was gonna bring back to life this drop-dead gorgeous warrior king from another galaxy and he'd take me to his home and make me his warrior doctor queen. Instead, I got you._ Tears stung her eyes. She loved Joel so much.

She began digging the ground with her knife, more like slashing it, looking for something. The frenzied concentration animating her young body rampaged through into Joel's heavy heart with a warmth that had an unmistakable sound, taste, fragrance, texture and color. Ellie. He was awe-struck by her bloody-mindedness. He felt calm again. Maybe even a little hopeful.

As he looked around for more nettles, his brain struggled to find something more left-field to idle on. _Is she doin' this for Tommy? Or is this for me? Kid's loyal and honorable, wouldn't surprise me if she did it for Tommy. For anybody on her side. For any breathing person, actually. Why do I need to know? As long as Tommy gets well, what does it matter? It don't. It shouldn't._ This unexpectedly led him to the words spoken by an old woman he used to know before the outbreak.

Two weeks. His wife had stepped out of the house for the last time. On the coffee table in the living room were a box of Kleenex, an architecture mag Jimmy had given him, some bills and a torn envelope postmarked New York. Beside it lay a neatly folded piece of paper with thick handwriting, and two gold rings: one simple, one with a small diamond. Joel was sitting on the sofa with Sarah sleeping on his chest. She'd been crying for nearly an hour straight, her tiny body shaking, her mouth gasping for air between convulsive sobs. Her eyes were squeezing out tears the size of peas. Out of his mind with grief, he'd closed his arms around his daughter as tightly as he dared to, hoping she wouldn't come apart. At last, exhaustion had melded her puffy eyes shut; he'd gently pushed her head forward over his shoulder until her chin found a comfortable resting place at the base of his neck. A fine warm mist was forming on her baby skin. _“When your body works, you sweat. When your soul works, you vaporise.”_ Ominous words from an old woman. He was used to their soft sting. It was his grandmother, whose company he enjoyed very much.

She stroked his black hair. Weather-beaten, withered crone hands he adored. British. This woman had come to the United States after the Second World War, had married for love, and had lost everything in one big blaze: husband, restaurant, home. She'd vowed never to work or own anything or love again. The last part escaped her. Of her eight grandchildren, Joel was her favorite.

“Don't lose your bottle, luv. You picked the wrong one.”

Normally, he would listen to her accent more than her words. He was used to it, but it still sounded wonderfully quirky, especially when she blended in some Texas English. Now, though, it was all words to him.

“Nan, I did everythin' for her. I loved her.”

“Yes, dear.”

Whenever it was time to take a bath, he'd say “Ladies first” and hand his wife a fresh towel. Whenever they went to a diner, he'd say "Ladies first" and hold the door open. When it was time to decide who gets to go to college first, he'd said “Ladies first” and handed her the truck's keys. She got a degree and he got Sarah. He would soon realize he had gotten the better end of the deal. But that day, he felt, not cheated, but betrayed.

“Then why?” Tears scalded his cheeks. He used to cry quite often before the outbreak. He just took care not to be seen.

“Why she upped sticks? I can't tell you. Did she love you? Of course. You're an easy bloke to love. It's not an accomplishment, mind you, it does nobody credit. Next time, just make sure you pick a girl who loves you not because of who you are, but because of who she is.”

“Don't think I got your meanin' there, but it sounded pretty harsh.”

“Or you could concentrate on raising Sarah.”

“Well, I ain't in a hurry to see anyone else. Reckon I'm done with that.”

“At the ripe old age of 22? Splendid. You'll change your mind. Perhaps 23 years from now. I'll have popped my clogs long since and I shan't have a chance to see you truly happy.”

“That what those Tarot cards of yours are tellin' you?”

“Why, no. It was the stars. The Cards and I are not on speaking terms. They failed to inform me of a very important sale at Lucky's.”

Joel smiled. “You coulda picked up a newspaper or looked through our junk mail.”

“Do you have any idea how many typos there are on those things?”

“Nan, please stay with us. Please. We'd love to have you. I ain't sayin' this for me. The streets ain't good for you. Winter's comin'. B'sides, who ever heard of a Manx hobo loiterin' in downtown Austin? You know, I can't believe I have to actually say the words.”

“No, dear. But I will visit you three quite often. I might even be persuaded to cook my world-famous shrimp and grits for y'all. It'll be a fiery affair. Where is your brother, by the way?”

Those sinewy hands that had accidentally set fire to her entire life twelve years before. _Grandpa would've forgiven you and you knew it. You'd almost done yourself in because of that, but you didn't. Why? Same reason as me. Bein' here. Curious to know how tomorrow'll pan out. Bein' at peace with my deeds and my punishment. Bein' with Ellie._

“This recipe don't look complicated. Surprised it's not better known. Surprised it works.” Huffing, Joel helped Ellie push to the side a tangle of tree roots sticking up from the ground.

“So am I. Winston said he had it from his grandmother. She suffered from colon cancer, too. Actually, most of his relatives did. So when his turn came, he was ready. ”

“You mean to tell me they all got cancer and they all got better drinkin' this stuff?”

“Yeah. At least, that's what he told me. But, you know, it might not even be cancer. It might just look like it.”

“And you got all the ingredients for him?”

“Me and Riley. He managed to get some of them on his own, trading, but he was on patrol duty most of the time, so he asked us to try and get the rest. Well, actually that's not true. He didn't really ask. More like we pestered him into letting us do it. By that time he'd shown us a bunch of movies, who could refuse to help? I mean, Rambo. Rocky. The Big Boss. Enter the Dragon. Come on! Dude, Winston was a fucking cultural icon in the QZ! Uh, you do know what I'm talking about, right?”

Joel chuckled. He had a feeling she wouldn't have stood idly by even without the movies. _Baby girl..._

“Wait, you went outside the wall to get this stuff?”

“No, of course not. We...traded.” Ellie blew up her legendary mischievous grin. It would have been visible in Andromeda if the Mooltrikonians there had pointed their ultra-zoomy panopticon lasers in this direction. But they'd probably witnessed so many zombie apocalypses up to this point that one more would drive them up the wall.

“Here we go...” Joel couldn't help grinning, too. There was a story here, as always, and he was about to be subjected to it.

“Operation Winston, Scavenger's Log 399584.948: The Morning the Poop Stood Still.” Drawing a huge amount of forest air into her lungs, Ellie was about to tell a long and complicated tale of friendship, gallantry, resourcefulness, heroics and human excrement when a twig snapped about 50 feet away.

She felt Joel's large hand grab her shoulder and push her down to the ground as the safety block of the El Diablo gave a thin click.

Two people were approaching, hands in the air. A man and a woman.

“Uh, hello? We're friendly. Do you have some clean water? My girlfriend here's very thirsty.”

Joel gave Ellie the you-stay-here-while-I-go-check look and stood up, hand firmly gripping the gun.

“You armed?” hollered Joel.

“Yeah, I have a bow and some arrows. And a hunting knife. My girlfriend has a handgun.”

“There's a stream a few miles east of here. Good spot to camp, take a bath.”

“Yeah, we were just there. A horde of stalkers showed up and we lost most of our stuff, including our canteens. We didn't get a chance to drink anything.”

_Stalkers? Ain't seen infected in these woods in a long time._

“Alright.”

As the man and woman approached, Joel lengthened his stride to cover more ground without seeming anxious. He wanted to put more distance between him and Ellie. She had her palm on her holster. They seemed young, mid-twenties. Joel held out his 17-ounce fresh water bottle.

The man approached slowly, took the bottle with a pacifying bow and gave it to the woman next to him.

“Thank you. Roger Iwakura.” The man held out his hand.

“Joel Miller.” Joel shook the man's hand.

“This is Linda Fieri.”

“Hi,” said the woman, still panting from the sudden water supply.

“Howdy,” nodded Joel.

Roger waved toward Ellie, smiling. “Hi, there. Thanks for not blowing our heads off.”

Ellie stood up and walked closer. “Hi. Ellie Williams.”

“Hi, Ellie.” Roger was Asian. Ellie had seen very few Asians in the Boston QZ, practically none. He had long bluish black hair gathered in a pony tail just like hers. His eyes were like black almonds and when he smiled they narrowed into thin slits. _Suuuuperawesome! Can he even see me?_

His gaze was caught by Ellie's right arm. _Holy shit, he saw it!_ It was a warm spring day, she'd rolled up her T-shirt sleeves early in the morning in anticipation of her hunter-gatherer mojo in the forest. She quickly rolled down her sleeve. Joel tensed up.

“It's fine,” said Roger, waving his hand dismissively. With his eyes he asked permission from Joel to tug at his own T-shirt. As he lifted up the hem, an enormous bite mark became visible. It covered a large portion of his left abdomen and back.

“Wow. Wolf?” asked Ellie.

“Grizzly.” Roger pulled down his T-shirt. “But yours is way cooler. Runner or stalker?”

Joel and Ellie looked at each other in panic.


	5. Mr. Miller

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel and Ellie talk it out. Turns out Joel isn't Mr. Darcy after all.

_Think, Ellie, think!_

“Neither. It was a hunter, a woman. She wanted my, um, can of peaches.” _Fuck, I shouldn't have hesitated like that. No way he bought it._ Ellie's gaze searched Roger's body language for clues to what he was thinking, what he was about to do. Nothing. Joel had his gun ready to aim. 

“Okay, if you say so. There's supposed to be a camp around here, near a dam. Are you from there?” asked Roger matter-of-factly. 

“We are,” said Joel. _Steady..._

“Would you folks mind if we rested there for a few days? Linda's pregnant, she needs to get cleaned up and lie down. Just a couple of days. Then we'll head on out.” 

“Where are you going?” asked Ellie. 

“L.A.. The climate there is easier to deal with. Linda can have the baby there.” 

Joel looked at Ellie. Ellie nodded. 

“We ain't the ones who decide, but we can put in a word for you. This way.” _Could be a hoax. Could be hunters. Or Marlene's people. Better keep'em close._

Ellie led the way. She was thinking hard. _Oh man, Roger knows. He didn't even flinch. He must have seen a scar just like mine. He might even have seen me before. I doubt even Joel can recall all the Fireflies he bumped into in the hospital. Maybe Roger was hanging way back, like a sniper or something. Gotta be extra careful around that guy. Joel's got my back. Which, did you see how Joel asked me for approval? And then he throws stuff at me like those stone-age novels. I swear, sometimes I just don't get that old man. What does he want from me?_

_I want you to be yourself._

_Oh yeah? Like spend all my time sewing bonnets and chasing after rich old men?_

_Christ, is that all you took away from your readin'?_

_What else was I supposed to take away?_

_We gotta talk about this._

_Damn straight we do! Oh, Jesus. Now I'm beginning to sound like you even when I'm talking to myself. That can't be good. Next thing you know, I'll be growing a gray bush all over my face. That'd be neat, actually._

Maria welcomed the two strangers with due caution. She offered them the town's guest lodging, a small house specially put aside for cases like this. Ample drinking water and food were delivered to the house. People were advised of the situation and were told to keep away and let the strangers rest. A couple of guards were told to discreetly keep an eye out. Let it never be said that the Stewarts are an inhospitable lot. They may hunt you down and take all your loot as you shimmy off into the sunset, but within the confines of the settlement you were treated like royalty. Maria hoped to God this wouldn't happen again. 

Before letting Joel go, Maria asked him to take over Mr. Harran's Survival class for one day. The poor man was sick again. Joel said sure. 

Joel and Ellie were finally back in their house that evening. Olivia had been fed and groomed, the stall had been cleaned. The magic potion for Tommy had been brewed and poured into a glass jar to cool down, ready for shipping early next morning. The floors had been mopped into a state of sparkling perfection that hurt Joel's eyes. Ellie had done all this quietly, all the energy she normally reserved for her speech organs redirected toward her arm and leg muscles. Joel pretended not to notice, going about his cooking and laundry in his usual laid-back way, but he finally admitted to himself that he was about to pop an artery. 

“Mind tellin' me what's wrong?” _She's achin' to say somethin', must be impor-_

“Why did you ask me?” 

“Ask you what?” 

“If it's alright to bring Roger and Linda here.” 

“I always ask you.” 

“Yeah. Why?” 

“Because it concerns you. Ellie, what's this about?” 

“Those novels you told me to read. Is that your idea of how people should behave?” Ellie's face was getting redder and redder. 

“The good people in there, yeah. What do you think?” 

“I think I don't know you as well as I thought.” 

“Now, wait a minute, Ellie, that was uncalled for.” 

“Whatever. I'm not gonna be a brain-dead leech with tits and a hole for anybody. Including you.” 

“When have I ever... Wait, is that what you think I'm doin'?” 

“You won't let me go hunting with you, you send me to that outhouse of a school run by a bunch of morons, my schoolmates are drooling lunatics, you get those stomach aches I can't do anything about. And then you ask me to make these big decisions for both of us. I don't fucking get any of it!” 

Joel knew better than to try to touch her in the state she was in. It looked like her outburst had caught her off-guard as well. He took a deep breath. 

“Sit down, Ellen.” 

Ellie glared at him. 

They sat at the kitchen table. Joel began talking, as soothingly as he could without sounding condescending. He was frightened. He had no idea Ellie was under such tension. 

“Ellie, I ain't good at explainin' things, which is why I thought readin' those books might give you some notion of why I have to protect you. In hindsight, I realize it was wrong of me. I shoulda made the effort to talk to you directly. I'm sorry. Fact is, I'm not lookin' to mold you into somethin' you're not. I just wanna give you the time and comfort you need to learn about yourself, about the world, at your own pace. I want you to have what I had too little of. A childhood. You may think you're too old for that but trust me, you ain't. I want you to be able to choose. You see, we're all taught how to behave and what to think by the people around us. It's called social conditionin'. In my time, there was a huge reaction to the type of stuff you see in those two novels. It was called Feminism. Some of it was very good. Men were treatin' women and kids like property and that had to stop. But most of it turned out bad, in my opinion.” 

“So you don't think men are better than women?” 

“Lord no. Most men think they are, and many women do too, but no. In all things that truly matter, women have the edge.” 

“In what way?” 

“They may be physically at a disadvantage, but they can give birth, and they're usually the ones that teach children to speak, to read, to interact with others. Ellie, women have always been the carriers of culture and ethics. A woman's soul is usually richer than a man's. She thinks and feels on more levels.” 

“How do you know that's not more of that conditioning? You've been brainwashed, I can tell. That beard of yours is a dead give-away.” 

“Can't get anythin' past you, can I?” Joel smiled. “I don't know. It's just what I've seen with my own eyes. What feels right to me. I ain't big on theory.” 

“How about men, though? There are so many of them. They must be good for something.” Ellie was in the mood for humor again, a sign she had calmed down somewhat. 

“Sure. Protectin' and helpin' the women.” 

“You're pulling my leg, right? You can't mean all that.” 

“I do mean it.” 

“But how can you say that when there are so many shitty women out there?” 

“Mostly it ain't their fault. When Feminism hit, it hypnotized them into believin' that havin' the choice of doin' all those things women are better at than men is shameful. Tenderness. Kindness. Sweetness. Innocence. Havin' style and good taste and manners. Thinkin' with their brains, not their loins. I may be wrong, but I want to give you that choice, 'cause the world sure as hell won't.” 

_A choice. Something Marlene never gave me. When I said “Okay” back then, right before we entered the settlement, I knew this is what you were giving me. A choice. Now that gift suddenly seems much larger. How do I accept it? I don't even understand it._

“Do I, like, have to crawl on my knees to do those things?” 

“Never. And don't let anybody talk you into believing that you do.” 

“Then you'll take me hunting tomorrow?” 

“Ellie!” 

“Okay, okay. Um, so, does this mean you never killed any women when you were a hunter?” 

“I killed a few in self-defense. Other than that, no. I never killed no woman and I never stole from none.” _And I sure as hell never raped none._

“Man, you really are like those stodgy dudes in those books! Methinks you put women on a pedestal. Goshdarn, you're a big ol' teddy bear after all!” 

“No, that's not what... Never mind. Just remember that most guys are trash.” 

“I know that, Joel. But it's kinda crappy to think men and women can't be real partners in every way.” 

"They can, but very rarely." 

"Like you and Tess?" 

"Not really." 

"Was she too good for you?" 

"I don't reckon. We just didn't fit." 

"Man... But I have a hard time believing that guys are irredeemably rotten." 

“It's true. Most of'em are predators. They ain't fit to be called human. 'Specially now.” 

“Aren't you going a bit overboard? Can't be healthy hating your own kind like that.” 

“Kid, if you knew the things I know, you wouldn't be in a hurry to sympathize with my kind.” 

“Hm. Still feeling trapped here. Seriously, when can I go hunting with you?” 

“When you're 18. That's only a year away. Olivia'll be ready by then, too.” 

“Why 18? Dude, that's so arbitrary!” 

“It is. Drove me crazy when I was your age.” 

“Then why, for crying out loud? I kept you alive that winter, and I was only 14! What, you think those rabbits just committed suicide and roasted themselves for your sweet ass?” 

“You had no choice then. End of discussion.” 

“Aggghhh! This is so frustrating!” 

“Tell you what, kiddo. Maria just asked me to teach Mr. Harran's class tomorrow. Whaddya say we show those schoolmates of yours some killer moves? That oughtta calm'em down. I know you've been handin' them stuff. You did good. But you won't have to after tomorrow, I reckon.” _God, I wish this was true..._

_Nellie!_ Ellie had been smiling from ear to ear for a good few minutes now. Her body refused to stay still one second more: she lunged for Joel, grabbing him from behind in a loose choke hold, and rubbed the top of his head with her knuckles. Then she suddenly turned all demure and coquettish. 

“I shall retire to my bed chamber now. I have much reading to complete.” 

“Aintcha havin' dinner?” 

“Oh yeah, I forgot!” 

Next morning, Ellie got up early. More like the day before. The sun wasn't even up. She laid out her best T-shirt and pants, she brushed clean her sneakers, and made a simple breakfast which had turned dead and blue by the time she had the nerve to wake up Joel. On their way to the school, she was walking so fast Joel had to do a light jog now and then to keep up. 

“You catchin' a train?” 

“Wha? Oh.” She slowed down. _I'm so gonna show you buttfaces who's the Queen of Andromeda!._ In particular, she couldn't wait to see Morgan's face, anticipated her zings with relish. 

Joel introduced himself to the class and explained the situation. 

“Hi, kids, I'm Mr. Miller. I'm Ellie's friend. Unfortunately, Mr. Harran is ill so there won't be a midterm today. Instead, I'm gonna teach you a good choke out technique you can apply to non-infected. Now, there's quite a few variations, and some of'em take into account a smaller body size. So Ellie and I'll demonstrate each one. Watch closely and if you have any questions, you holler.” 

The demonstration began. Ellie and Joel moved so smoothly around each other, it looked like a minutely choreographed dance. _Yeah, you like that? Who da boss? The only thing we need now is some cheesy out-of-sync dubbing and a crummy soundtrack and we've got ourselves a bona fide Kung-Fu flick!_ Everybody was gaping in awe. Ellie was having the time of her life. Joel was barely able to keep a straight face, especially when she had him on his knees, leaning back into her choke hold, making like he was trying to escape. She was explaining in a phony schoolmarmy tone the finer points of the variant, with a voice so loud it almost pierced his ear drums. 

Then came everybody else's turn to try. Each student had to experience the choke hold and then apply it to the instructor. Joel would much rather have split the class in two and let Ellie handle one half, but he was afraid the students would be wary of touching her. He was relieved to see her nodding even before his gaze located her for agreement. She stood way at the back of the class, hands behind her back, looking. 

The instruction proceeded uneventfully, in the sense that Joel prayed to God these kids would never have to defend themselves. He'd rarely seen such lack of awareness and motivation, even in the QZ. The only passable performance was that of Joshua Stewart's boys, Craig and Marcus. 

Then came Morgan Simms's turn. She had been staring at Joel and Ellie with a smirk and inscrutable blue eyes. Now she was in Joel's arms. 

_The hell... Is she rubbing herself against me? Damn these teenage girls and their hormones..._

She was practically dry-humping Joel. Ellie saw it. Everyone else saw it. Instantly, the class erupted into a cascade of whistling, cat calls, lewd cheers, clapping. Ellie went into a boiling rage, only tempered by the undeniable fact that the whole thing was hilarious. _Morgan in heat. Nellie._ If Joel had shown any sign of embarrassment or discomfort, the comedy would have tripled. But as it was, Joel, unflappable as ever, quickly released the girl and asked her politely to return to her seat. 

“But Mr. Miller, I haven't choked you out yet.” Morgan's languid eyes were encased in a strongly flushed face covered in fine perspiration. 

“That's alright. It's recess time. Thanks, kids, that'll be all for today. Mr. Harran will resume his duties next week. Dismissed.” 

On the way home, Joel asked Ellie. 

“Who the hell was that?” 

“Morgan? She's Mrs. Simms's daughter. I think you've got yourself a fan there, Joel!” 

“Psssh.” 

“She's kind of pretty, too. Nasty as a ringworm, but pretty.” 

“Hm.” 

“Come on, admit it, weren't you the least bit turned on? You realize you have to become her sex slave now. Otherwise her mom won't treat you.” 

“That girl? Nah. I need more woman than that.” 

“Whoa, confession time! Who, then?” 

“In the settlement? Nobody.” 

“Really? Hmmm, we gotta get you out more.” 

“I reckon. But I doubt I know how anymore.” Joel grinned slyly. 

“Oh, come on, that I don't believe. Big guy like you?” 

“B'sides, I'm a married man, as you well know.” It was Joel's turn to be all demure and coquettish. He seemed to pull it off better than Ellie. 

“Oh yeah, Niamh. I still don't get what that was about.” 

“Tough to explain.” 

“Can you maybe try me again later?” 

“Maybe.” 

“You think those creeps'll bother me again?” 

“If they do, you tell me. Deal?” 

“Deal.” 

Ellie felt happier than she had been in a long time. 

With sunset wafted in through the living room window the sweet smell of barbecue from somewhere in the town. Ellie could see the smoke rising lazily from what looked to be the town square. Loud laughter, the sound of firecrackers. People were heading that way in droves. 

“Joel, check it out!” Ellie was pointing through the open window. “Let's go see what it is!” 

“After you, kiddo.” 


	6. The Card

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie has a crush.

Ellie had never seen anything like it: people were standing around together, chatting, laughing, hopping in circles, many of them probably for the first time in years. There was beer and wine in tin cups and PET bottles and mugs, fruit juice and yoghurt for the kids. The piping hot grill at one corner of the town square was turning out one sizzling juicy steak after another: people would enter a cloud of smoke empty-handed and come out with a delicious hunk of meat on a paper plate. There was music blaring from a portable CD player hooked up through several extension cords to a generator in somebody's back yard. The noise was enormous.

“Wow! What's the deal?” yelled Ellie, turning to Joel with a smile the size of Jupiter.

“Looks like a regular festival,” Joel smiled, looking at the crowd, squinting to catch every detail.

“A festival? What's that?”

“Uh, people would gather to celebrate somethin'.”

“Like a birthday?”

“Sorta. But usually it ain't a person that's bein' remembered. It's an event or a tradition.”

“Ah, so it's more like Christmas.”

“You could say that.”

Maria's voice reached them through the din.

“Glad you two made it. I was coming to get you.” She patted Ellie on the shoulder.

“What's all this?” Joel asked.

“It's Roger. Turns out he puts on magic shows in exchange for room and board wherever he goes. Tommy and I thought we might as well build a party around it. God knows this place needs it.”

“Magic shows?” asked Ellie. _Like, Skeleseer?_

“Listen, I have to go back to Tommy. I'll see you tomorrow. Have fun!” 

Maria was about to turn around when Ellie caught her by the arm.

“Wait, let me run home quickly and bring that jar of goo we made. It's all ready, it just needs to cool down. You can give Tommy one dose tonight.” Ellie disappeared into the crowd.

“Now, Ellie!” shouted Joel over some people's heads.

“She'll be alright. Roger's right over there.” Maria was pointing toward the middle of the town square.

It was a real magic show Roger was rolling out. There were no top hats or rabbits, but a kid's bracelet would jump from one arm to the other arm. Most of the children watched in complete apathy. Thankfully, the adults had the decency to clap after every trick. 

“Guy's pretty good.” Joel looked at Maria. He really wanted to ask about Tommy, but her face was so pale and drawn he decided to ease the conversation in that direction.

“Looks that way,” she said, bobbing on her toes, itching to go back home.

“You think he might be hidin' somethin'?”

“I haven't found evidence one way or the other.”

“How's his girlfriend?”

“Resting in the guest house.”

“That guy saw Ellie's scar and didn't bat an eye. What do you think?”

“Maybe he knows someone who's immune?” It was clear from her tone that she was offering Joel the most neutral explanation she could think of, and that she was apologizing for it. She'd been harassed by so much misfortune lately that her avoidance of tragedy was understandable.

_How do I put this? Gotta ask about Tommy._

“I don't know what Ellie gave Tommy yesterday, but he's awake and lucid and talking. Still in bed, but much better,” said Maria, looking at the show. “Where did she learn all that?”

_Thank God._

“I don't know myself. She knew a lot 'bout treatin' wounds when I met her, but this is on a whole 'nother level. I did give her a book on natural remedies 'bout a year ago, but from that to this... it's somethin'.”

“You've got yourself a treasure, Joel,” smiled Maria.

“Reckon I do.” Joel nodded. The pride he felt was different from his fatherly pride in Sarah. This girl had _chosen_ him. Gratitude and respect and awe could not begin to describe what he felt for her.

“Best keep Ellie's skills under wraps,” Maria mused, staring at Roger's nimble hands.

“Yeah.” Joel's gaze darkened again.

Ellie was back, panting, holding up the warm jar.

“Thanks, Ellie.” Maria took it and hurried home.

“Did I miss anything?” Ellie patted Joel on the back.

“You missed a lot.” Joel pointed in Roger's direction and crossed his arms. Scarves were flying every where, appearing and disappearing, changing shape and color.

“Duuuude, how the hell did he do that?” Her eyes went wide. “Wha?!”

The tricks Roger was doing became more and more mind-boggling. None of the kids except Ellie were paying attention. The adults were slowly getting drunk and rowdy. A clear night sky had engulfed the town; there were so many stars hanging in the abyss above that they looked like glowing goop about to trickle down onto Wyoming.

“Tough crowd,” Roger chuckled, going from one thing to the next at break-neck speed. Then he lifted his hands and shouted. “Stop the music!”

The local DJ pressed STOP, a vacant expression on his face. 

Complete silence, save for the sputtering grill.

“I need a volunteer. Is anyone here a redhead? I need a redhead for the next trick.”

People looked around at each other. There was nobody except Ellie.

Roger turned to her, smiling. _Wow. Guy's really handsome! Look at those eyes and those cool eyebrows! Like on the guy on that Kabuki poster in the Liberty Gardens Mall._

“Miss, would you give me a hand here?” he said, holding out his hand.

His tone was the friendliest she'd heard from a total stranger. There was no pretense that she could sense, and she prided herself on having a pretty accurate bullshit detector. He genuinely needed help to save the show. It knotted up her insides, as if she'd realized she'd been incredibly hungry for a long while. _Were people this friendly to each other before the pandemic?_

Ellie looked at Joel.

“Go on, I gotcha.” He nodded, smiling.

Ellie approached the “stage”. It consisted of a kitchen table, a chair and a brightly lit street lamp. The clan's eyes were peering at her from all around. All 27 of her schoolmates were there, sitting cross-legged on the ground, sucking on their straws, following her every move.

“Pick a card,” said Roger, holding up a deck of cards spread into a fan.

“Any card?”

“Any card.”

 _Somewhere to the right of middle. There._ Ellie showed Roger the card.

“No, don't show me. Put it back and pick another one.”

“Okay.” _Oh God, I made a mistake! He thinks I'm a complete idiot now!_

 _The fourth from the left. That looks nice._ Ellie's heart was pounding violently. _Dammit, my hands are shaking. I'm such a noob..._

“Okay, there. What do I do with it?”

“Take the marker on the table and write your name on the back.”

Ellie wrote her name in capital letters. _Now I've ruined the whole deck with my shitty handwriting._

“Show everyone the card, both front and back.”

She waved her card in front of the whole town. Three of hearts. “ELLIE”.

“Put the card in that box over there.” Roger was pointing to a small metal box with a golden lock sitting on a wide railing a few feet away.

“Take the key and lock the box.”

Done. Ellie came back to the table.

“You ready?” asked Roger.

She nodded nervously.

“Now go over to your friend and ask him what he has in his back pocket.”

She chuckled and walked over to Joel, her eyebrows arched high, arms flung wide in incredulous anticipation. Joel uncrossed his arms, slid his hand into his right back pocket and fished out a card.

“Whoa! No fucking way!” 

She took the card from Joel and examined it carefully. Three of hearts on the front, “ELLIE” on the back. Definitely her handwriting. She showed everyone the card, making sure they all got it. Joel and a few others clapped, someone whistled his appreciation. Ellie brought the card back to Roger, smiling from ear to ear.

“Wanna do it again?” asked Roger in a low, conspiratorial tone. There was mischief afoot. Ellie had to be in on it.

“Sure.” _What the fuck! How did he do that? I gotta get him to teach me._

“Alright.” His voice was strong and clear again, like that of a commander. He held up a red scarf.

“Take this and blindfold me.”

Ellie took the cloth, folded it into a 3-inch-wide band and wrapped it around Roger's head, making sure he couldn't see down his nose.

“Take the deck of cards and shuffle.”

Done.

“Make a fan in your hands and ask someone to pick a card. Tell that person not to show you the card.”

_Who do I go to...? Hmmm. I know!_

Ellie walked around holding up the card fan and finally stopped in front of Morgan.

“Pick a card,” Ellie said, in a brash carny tone.

Joel shook his head, almost laughing. _Kid's impossible._

Morgan stood up slowly, looking around her as if she'd just been rescued from a 3-week siege. While she was deciding which card to pick, Ellie added loudly. “And don't show it to me.”

Roger continued. “Now you do the rest.”

“What?! Okay...” _Oh shit! I'm so gonna fail._ Ellie drew a large breath and spread her legs a little for stability.

“Go over to the table, take the marker, and write your name on the back of the card,” directed Ellie.

Morgan did as she was told.

“Now show everyone the card, front and back.”

Morgan walked in a small circle around the table, flipping the card on both sides several times.

“Put the card in Mr. Joshua Stewart's shirt pocket.”

Morgan went over to her mom's old acquaintance and put her card in his breast pocket.

 _No, no, no, Ellie..._ Joel scratched his head, anticipating disaster. _Kid's gonna be so embarrassed and disappointed._ He sighed, crossed his arms over his chest again and waited it out.

“Now go to Mr. Hensen and ask him to take off his hard hat.”

Mr. Hensen took off his yellow hard hat for Morgan. A card fell to the ground. Everyone was able to confirm it was indeed Morgan's.

People were staring, speechless. Joel was relieved, stifled a huge chuckle. He clapped. 

Roger took off his blindfold and clapped at Ellie. “Brava. Your first trick was a masterpiece.”

Ellie stood there, the deck of cards in one hand, her other hand on her forehead trying to find her mind. 

“What the fuck just happened?”

“You did magic. Come on, help me clean up the place.”

As Ellie and Roger were gathering all the props and putting them into a small tube-shaped orange duffel bag - scarves, ping-pong ball, metal box with lock and key, paper, stapler, coins, metal hoops, deck of cards – a short, stout man with an enormous belly stumbled over to the table brandishing a jug of beer. Half his brew was plopping around in his jug, the other half was trying to escape from his huge unkept beard. Marty McHinky, town locksmith.

“Hey, sushi!”

Every adult head except Ellie's turned toward Roger. She didn't get the reference. She just looked up, saw old man McHinky and figured he'd gotten so drunk he was talking to his dead guppy again.

“I sed hey sushi!”

Roger, who'd been ignoring the owner of the beer belly, straightened up.

“I'm Chinese, you moron. I was adopted.”

“I din ask fur yur rezmay, kung pow.”

 _This is gonna get ugly._ “Ellie! Come here,” shouted Joel, waving her to him.

Ellie had stopped packing. She was looking at old McHinky and at Roger, bewildered. _How did this go south so fast? Over a dead fish? Chinese people don't like fish?_ She went over to Joel.

Roger stood calmly, putting more weight on one foot, arms crossed across his chest. “What do you want?”

“I wanna see yu open that box, is what I wan.”

“Open it yourself.”

“I wil!”

Old beer belly put down his jug on the table, roughly parted the zipper of the open duffel bag and fished out the metal box. He had some trouble finding the key, and more trouble slipping the key into the hole of the lock. The box was empty. He closed the box, locked it, put down the key and threw the box at Roger, who ducked. The box hit the stone pavement with a soft clang.

“Are you done?” yelled Roger.

McHinky wasn't. He started running in Roger's direction, intending to ram into him head first. Roger swished to the side. McHinky tripped and broke his nose on the pavement.

“Hey chikin chow main!”

“Did you say something, haggis?”

“Why donchya go bak to yur gook continen?”

“Right after you go back to your limey island.”

“We stil remember wachya did in '41!”

“What are you, deaf? CHINESE!”

Roger and old McHinky were circling the table like a couple of pirates fighting over a box of macaroons. Ellie had no idea what this was about. What's a gook? What's a haggis? What's 41? She was, of course, rooting for Roger. _The guy's having such a good time, no way he's done anything wrong!_ When he passed by Ellie, he crinkled his nose, winked at her and mouthed: “Watch this.”

“Hey noodle brain!”

“What's up, hamburger face?”

Old McHinky kept wobbling around the table, but Roger stopped. McHinky mistook that for an opening and arched back to swing. He missed and spun around once.

“Hey moo shoo pig!”

“What's with the stereotypes, man?”

Roger suddenly composed himself into a shape Ellie recognized on the spot: the Bruce Lee stance, complete with the “Bring it” flick of the fingers.

_Oh fuck! This is gonna be EPIC!!!_

McHinky drew out his pistol. Roger was instantly in front of him; with a tight, jerky motion, he struck the middle of the beer belly with the palm of his hand. It didn't look like much, but the old guy landed in a pile of trash 30 feet away. Everyone cheered madly.

Roger came over to Ellie and Joel.

“Thanks for the help, Ellie. Great show.” He shook Joel's hand, winked at Ellie again and walked away.

Ellie was so awestruck she forgot about her blossoming crush.

On the way home, she couldn't keep quiet. Joel barely stifled a smile.

“Joel, did you see that?!!!”

“I sure did.”

“Wasn't I cool? I mean, I know it wasn't me, but still, it was so fucking incredible. And the way he punched that guy, I mean he barely moved and BAM!!!, the guy was in another part of the galaxy.”

“He sure knows his stuff.”

“What's 41?” Ellie wanted to ask about the other terms she'd heard, but she didn't remember any of them.

“41?”

“The fat guy was saying he still remembered what Roger did in 41. Is that, like, 1941?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Psssh, Roger wasn't even born then!”

“He was referring to Pearl Harbor, when Japanese bombers attacked Hawaii.”

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing. It's just that the United States entered World War 2 because of that.”

“Oh. But we won, and he was trying to rub Roger's nose in it?”

“Yeah.”

“What a jerk.”

“Funny thing is, some say the government knew the attack was coming, but they let it happen anyway. Two thousand people died.”

“Why the hell?!”

“It's called a “false flag” event. Governments use it all the time to provoke conflict and appear like the good guys. The ordinary folks didn't want to get involved in the war, so our government did that to convince them to go with it.”

“You mean like planting evidence?”

“Yup.”

“Jesus. Things weren't much better than in the QZ, huh, Joel?”

“No, ma'am.”

"And when McHinky said that, he didn't know?"

"Clearly not."

"Dumb. But do you think what Roger did was real magic?”

“Nah. More like misdirection.”

“Misdirection?”

“It's when someone distracts your attention to make somethin' look like somethin' else.”

“But you saw it, it was impossible!”

“Sure looked like it.”

“Man... You think it's safe to go for a visit and ask him how he did it?”

“Now, I don't know 'bout that. Maybe if we both go.”

“Oh man!!!!”

After school next day, Ellie knocked on the guest house door, a can of beans in her hands. Joel was right behind her.

Roger welcomed them warmly. He poured them some tea. The aroma was subtle, unique. Ellie asked what it was; she found out it was jasmine tea. It didn't have any sugar in it, which was kind of weird, but she enjoyed it a lot. While showing Ellie a few basic coin tricks, Roger told them about his days as a soldier in the Seattle QZ, how his little sister was bitten 8 years ago but turned out to be immune, how some neighbors found out and lynched her while he was on patrol. One of them was her godmother. She would have been 21 this year.

“Is that why you left?” asked Ellie.

“Yes. QZ's are a fricking disaster. I'd rather take my chances out here.”

“But what about Linda and the baby? It's difficult to get your hands on fresh formula out here.”

“We'll manage.”

“How is she?” Joel asked.

“Very good, thanks to you two. She's sleeping most of the time. Bone-tired. We both are. Thank you for having us.” 

“We're glad to help.” Joel stood up. “C'mon, Ellie, let's let Roger and Linda rest. Thanks for the tea. When you head on out, make sure to drop by our place. It's the house with the blue roof right next to the gate. I can give you some ammo and some food cans.”

“We appreciate it.” Roger bowed.

“Ellie?” urged Joel.

“Yeah, thanks for the lesson. See you!” Ellie bowed back. _And I have no idea what I'm doing!_

“Bye bye!” smiled Roger.

When Ellie was sure she and Joel were out of ear shot, she asked Joel.

“Doesn't look like he's a hunter or one of Marlene's guys, does it?”

“My gut says he's legit, but we still gotta be careful.”

“Yeah.”

“You kinda like that guy, huh?” said Joel tenderly. Ellie wished there had been more teasing in his voice. It was too earnest, it made her feel vulnerable.

“Kinda. For a while,” she admitted. Joel wished she hadn't admitted it so easily. It hurt a little.

“I'm sorry about his sister,” she said.

Joel nodded. “That's what we do with our best hope.”

Early next morning, a heavy fist was pounding on the front door of Joel and Ellie's house. When Joel opened the door, he saw Maria, Joshua Stewart, Roger and six more men standing on the porch. Maria sighed and took a step forward, embarrassed.

“Joel, we need to search the house.”

“Why?” Joel frowned. His heartburn kicked in.

“Linda says she saw Ellie sneak into the guest house and steal the magic show props.”


	7. Melding gun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old McHinky is at it again. He needs to go.

_What the hell kinda bullshit is this?_

Joel knocked softly on Ellie's bedroom door, the nine adults crowding him from behind. His blood was boiling. It was a Saturday, she was sleeping in as always. No answer.

“Y'all stay here,” murmured Joel, more than a hint of threat in his voice.

He cracked open the door. She was still asleep. He went in, closing the door behind him, pulled down the polar fleece from the window like he had done in the rest of the house. This was how things were done in the settlement. They'd form a posse and storm the house of anyone who got accused of stealing. Joel had been on many of these raids, he never liked it. He felt dirty traipsing through people's private quarters, seeing things he wasn't meant to be seeing. He'd rummaged through people's drawers in disgust. Now they were doing it to him and Ellie.

She was upside down in her bed, her comforter mostly bunched up between her bare legs. Her T-shirt had ridden up over her right breast, her pillow was on the floor. Everything was normal. Joel covered her torso with a corner of the comforter and nudged her shoulder.

“Ellie,” he whispered.

“Huh?” She fumbled instinctively for Joel's shoulder, keeping her eyes closed.

“Ellie, c'mon, get up.”

“One more minute.” She winced.

“No honey, you gotta get up now.”

“Mmmmmmm!”

“Here, put on your bath robe.”

She pulled herself off the bed and slid into her Blue Elephant flannel robe, the one Joel gave her. He herded her over to the other side of the room; she was too busy rubbing her eyes to protest. It had been a late night. Actually, she'd fallen asleep one hour earlier, still raving about the card trick in the town square, mulling over Roger's story, trying to remember the details of the coin tricks he'd shown her. In the hour she was asleep, she had a disturbing dream involving scarves, a metal box and a bat cave.

The nine adults came into Ellie's bedroom. Maria went over to Ellie and stood beside her, holding her by the shoulder protectively. She didn't like this any more than Joel, but she had no choice. This had been her ground rule, one she'd laid down when things had started to become too raucous in town.

Roger was too rattled to look at Ellie, even as she waved at him; he stood in a corner looking out the window. The other men began opening drawers, lumbering around in their cowboy boots, much too interested in Ellie's girly nicknacks. It wasn't long before one of them yelled.

“Got it!”

He pulled out the orange duffel bag from under the bed. It was all Roger's stuff.

Ellie was still groggy. “What's that?”

Roger looked at Ellie, appalled. Maria looked at Joel. Ellie looked at the orange bag.

“Ellie, did you take this?” Joel asked quietly. _Of course she didn't. Damn you Joel, you're goin' straight to hell for even utterin' these words._

“Take what?”

“This bag.”

“No.”

Roger went over to Ellie and patted her on the shoulder. He looked downhearted. “Listen, it's okay. I'm not gonna file charges or anything.”

“File whats?” Ellie was feeling very guilty, still having no idea what this was about.

With a sigh, Roger took the bag, hoisted the strap on his shoulder, and left the room.

Joshua Stewart waved a finger in Joel's face. “Miller, you've got to talk to that girl of yours. This kind of behavior won't go down well.”

“Josh!” shouted Maria. “We're leaving. NOW.”

Maria gave Joel an I'm-sorry-we'll-talk look and corralled the men out of the house.

It was quiet again. Joel sat down on Ellie's bed, rubbing his beard, thinking.

“Ellie, did you let anyone in while I was away?”

“No. You said no guests.”

“That's right. No guests...” _Who did this? Somebody with access to both the guest house and this house. Someone with a grudge against Ellie. That narrows it down to about three hundred people.... Think, Joel!_

“Get dressed. We're going to Tommy's.”

On the way, Ellie put two and two together. Clearly somebody was after her. It could be anybody. And now Roger hated her.

“This is creepy, Joel.”

“Don't worry. Nothing's gonna happen.” _My baby girl... My treasure..._ Joel walked like an earthquake waiting to happen.

Barely inside, Ellie asked Maria for a pen and paper. She jotted down everything she knew about the recipe, including which substitutions were possible in case an ingredient wasn't available. Joel found Tommy in the garage, tinkering at his motorcycle. He was already on the same page as Joel, sketching out a strategy in his mind. Joel and Ellie had to leave. Tommy was well enough to go out and start throwing his weight around in a big way, attracting as much attention as he could. Insinuations with horrendous implications were going to be his main weapon, but the effect would wear off soon.

“Joel, whenever you and Ellie are ready, you holler. I'll hold'em off.”

“You're not thinkin' of stayin'!”

“I have to. But look. This whole thing may be nothing.”

“Somebody snuck into our house and planted that thing in Ellie's room. I'd say it's cause for concern.”

“I know. Nothin' we can do but keep an eye out. Don't be rash.”

 _My baby brother's a real politician..._ Joel was bitter.

It was Monday, around noon. Joel was fixing the faucet in the kitchen for the tenth time this month. Running water was a marvel in a world like this, but it vexed him to no end. Ellie was in the stable with Olivia. At least something was going right: Olivia was growing faster than any foal he'd seen. A bright one, too, just like her mistress.

Somebody knocked on the door.

“Comin'.”

Joel trotted over to the door, wiping his vaseline-stained fingers with a cloth. Outside the door stood one of the men in the posse from two days before. Flynn Channing, a mechanic.

“Howdy, what can I do for you?” _I don't like this._

“Miller, you better tell that girl to hand over my welding gun.”

“Now stop right there! What would she need with a weldin' gun?”

“How do I know? Just hand it over, or I'll call a town meeting and have your asses out of here by dinner time.”

Joel remembered Ellie's sage words. _Endure and survive._ He motioned Flynn to follow him outside.

“Ellie! Ellie!” The only one in the stable was Olivia.

“There's my welding gun!” Flynn barged in and stuck his hand in the empty manure pail. There it was, a welding gun that looked like it had seen many repairs.

“What is this...?” Joel hissed. “Ellie! Ellie!”

She was nowhere. The basement, the house, the backyard, the stall. Joel ran to the school. Closed. He rammed the door, searching every class room. Nobody.

He ran to Tommy's. “Ellie's missin'.”

“Holy shit!”

“You search the town, I'm gonna go outside.”

“Go on.”

Joel ran back home, quickly strapped on his backpack, loaded his El Diablo and his shotgun, and ran to the gate. He asked the guard if he'd seen Ellie. The guard shook his head. He let Joel through.

“Ellie! Ellie!” Between his heart fluttering in his chest like a trapped sparrow and his stomach burning his insides, he could hardly see straight.

Before he realized, he was a few miles into the forest. There was no sign of her, no tracks. Tears were pooling in his eyes. The knot in his stomach had built another base in his throat. He'd never felt this helpless in his life.

“Ellie!”

“Shhhhhhhhhh!”

“Ellie?”

“Dude, keep your voice down.”

Joel looked around. The loud whisper had come from inside a hollow tree trunk lying a few feet away hidden in some tall grass.

“Goddammit, Ellie, what the hell are you doin' here?”

“You gotta go back. NOW.”

“What?”

“Go back. There's a huge bear.”

Joel looked around. Trees. Grass. Rocks. The deep blue sky.

“Ellie, come outta there.”

“I can't.”

“Why?”

“I broke my ankle. I can't run.”

“You don't need to run, I'll carr-”

A deafening growl boomed through the forest. Joel spun around. A grizzly bear the size of Mount Everest was hurtling toward him, its shiny brown fur jiggling ferociously on its jelly-like blubber.

“OH SHIT!” Barely aiming, he fired off his double barrel. The recoil knocked him backward; his heel got caught on a thick tree root that sent him flying butt first into a colony of ferns. He scrambled to his feet and started sprinting. _No time to reload._ He flung his shotgun into a bush and pulled the El Diablo from the holster. _Tree, tree...! That looks climbable. I'm too old for this crap!_ In two upward spurts he was at the top of a tree that suddenly felt too short on tallness. When the brown behemoth slammed into it, it almost snapped. The tree was swaying so violently, he had no chance of aiming. He twisted his torso, clamped the tree branch tighter between his legs and fired. The bear fell to the ground.

“Joel!”

“I'm alright! Stay there!”

He climbed down slowly, making sure the beast wasn't going to pull anything funny, and rushed to Ellie's tree trunk.

“Can you crawl out?”

“Yeah.”

As her face started to emerge, he could tell she was in great pain. The skin over her left cheekbone was badly scratched; she was wincing with every tread on her left knee.

“Here baby, I gotcha.” Joel helped her seat herself on the hollow stump, knelt and took off her left sneaker. He felt the ankle for fractures.

“Ow!”

He started to rotate the foot by the toes.

“Joel!” She pounded the ground with her right foot.

“Don't look broken. Just sprained.”

“I'm peeing my pants from the pain, dude. It's gotta be worse.”

“Nah, you just need to keep your weight off of it for a while.”

“Like, till the end of the semester?”

“I'm thinkin' more like two weeks.”

“Fuck.”

“Hold this.”

Joel handed her the sneaker. He quickly went to retrieve his shotgun, came back, and lowered himself to the ground on one knee with his back turned toward Ellie.

“Hop on.”

“What? Dude, I can walk!”

“Hop. On.”

“Arrrrggghhhh!”

Ellie clambered up Joel's back. He clasped his hands under her bum, careful not to touch her. She sandwiched her sneaker between her belly and Joel's backpack, sole facing her. Just like when riding a horse, she held on to his backpack.

They – or rather Joel – walked a good 100 feet in silence before Ellie couldn't take it anymore. 

“Aren't you gonna ask me what happened? Or at least dole out some incredibly harsh punishment?”

Joel didn't answer. He kept putting one steady foot in front of the other.

“Joel?”

Joel kept walking.

“Joel. Say something.”

The rustle of two heavy feet parting the forest grass echoed and died in the breeze.

“Alright. Here's how it went down. Old McHinky came into the stable asking me where Flynn Channing's melding gun was. I told him I didn't know what he was talking about, since, like, I don't even know what a melding gun is. Then he said his set of screwdrivers went missing two weeks ago and that I should hand it over or else. He pulled out his pistol and said that if I made a sound his guys were gonna bust into the house and go after you. So I put my hands up and said Okay, you got me, I'll give you back your stuff, and I drew him out of the stable and into the backyard. The plan was to draw him away from the front door. Well, he unblocked the safety, so I figured I gotta leg it out of there fast. I pointed behind him and said Oh my god! but he didn't buy it, so I said Fuck it and jumped on the crates and over the fence. I swooshed through the Vent and ran into the forest, but he followed my ass. Then that demented fur ball started roaring and chasing us and he ran away and I hid in the tree. All the while I was thinking, If I get out of this alive, Joel's so gonna kill me and then he's gonna end himself because he loves me so much and I love him too more than he'll ever know and we can finally be together like Marianne and Colonel Brandon, only Colonel Brandon isn't a Colonel, he's a builder, and a damn fine one, and he hasn't been to India only Mexico, and he's three times his own age, and he can down a Bengal tiger with one hand.”

Joel didn't say a word.

“Um, so, are you mad at me?”

He stopped walking.

“I ain't mad at you. I...”

He started walking again.

Ellie cupped Joel's chin and mumbled into his ear. “How's your stomach?”

“It hurts.”

She pressed her cheek against the side of his head.

When they arrived at the gate, the guard shouted. “Hey Joel, you guys better go to the town square.”

“What about?”

“Damned if I know. Almost everyone's there.”

Nodding, Joel walked through the gate, Ellie on his back. _Here we go..._

They were spotted by the townsfolk from far away. Everyone was staring at them. Maria rushed over to Joel, helped pull Ellie down and sat her on a bench at the edge of the square. Tommy was standing on a chair, clearly in the middle of calming everyone down. Roger and Linda were there too, ready to leave the settlement judging from their gear. 

When Linda saw Ellie all roughed up and limping, leaning against Maria for support as she reached for the bench, she lifted her hands to her face, eyes aghast, and blurted out.

“I'm sorry! Oh God, I'm so sorry!”

Everyone turned to look at her.

“What do you mean you're sorry? You had nothing to do with this,” said Roger.

“Oh God...” Linda continued, horror-stricken.

Tommy intervened. “If you've got something to say, you better say it now.”

Linda confessed to planting the duffel bag under Ellie's bed. Roger was dumb-struck.

Joel spoke. “Now y'all see Ellie here had no part in any of it.”

Joshua Stewart countered. “That doesn't mean she didn't steal Flynn's welding gun.”

“Aintcha stretchin' it, Joshua? What would a 17-year-old girl do with a thing like that?” hollered Joel, his fury beginning to show. _Endure and survive..._

Maria walked over to Tommy, traded places with him on the chair.

“Look everybody, this isn't how it's supposed to happen. This isn't what this community was built for. Clearly, Ellie has been set up. We now know that Linda is responsible for the first incident, but we still don't know who's behind the second one. I'm guessing whoever it was got the idea from Linda. Also, I hear Marty McHinky held Ellie at gunpoint, accusing her of stealing a set of screwdrivers that he lost two weeks ago. She had to run into the woods, and she twisted her ankle running away from a bear. This is unacceptable. Do any of you know where he is?”

Nobody stirred.

“Alright. If he comes back, his running water and electricity privileges will be suspended for a month. Also, his weapons will be confiscated indefinitely. If he doesn't come back within a month, his house will be vacated so that another family can move in. This is final. I don't want to see anything like this happen ever again. If you have any information on who planted the welding gun in Ellie's stable, you contact me or Tommy immediately.”

The townspeople began to disperse.

Roger walked over to Ellie. “Ellie, I can't tell you how sorry I am about this. Here.” He handed her the deck of cards.

“Psssh. What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Play poker.”

“Okay.” Ellie smiled. He ankle was throbbing so hard she almost yelled her answer.

Contritely bowing to Joel, Maria and Tommy, Roger started walking in the direction of the gate, never looking at Linda. Panicking, she scuttled after him. 

“Get away from me.”

“I'm sorry, I thought you were beginning to like her too much.”

“Are you insane? She's younger than my kid sister!”

“Baby, I just didn't want to lose you.”

“Linda, you're a cunt. Stay away from me.” 

They lowered their voices, but Linda kept tugging at Roger's arm and he kept flicking her off of him. From far away came Roger's exasperated yell.

“You're not even pregnant?!”

Joel sat beside Ellie on the bench, giving an exhausted sigh. She tilted her head in the direction of the vanishing couple.

“You still think women are better than men?”

“Hmph. Let's go home.”

Life was cozy and quiet. Joel was doing all the house work, all the grooming and feeding of Olivia, all the cleaning of the stable. Tommy and Maria were dropping by every day, bringing supplies so that Joel wouldn't need to go hunting or scavenging. Ellie felt so pampered she didn't know what to do with herself. Her ankle still hurt like hell, but, boy, was life treating her kindly!

“Joel, could you please bring me a glass of water?”

Joel brought her water.

“And some lemons?”

Joel brought her a lemon.

“And some honey?”

Joel brought her the jar of honey.

“You need a spoon with that, ma'am?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She had a lemon, a jar of honey, a jug of fresh drinking water and a spoon on the coffee table in front of her.

“Joel, could you please bring me a knife?”

“A what?”

“A knife.”

“What? I can't hear you.”

“A KNIFE!”

“What's that?”

“Fuck you!” she laughed.

A few minutes later, he came back to the living room, hiding something behind his back.

“That'd better be a knife, old man!”

He placed on her lap a blue box, 35 inches by 25 inches by 8 inches. It said PlayStation 5 in white letters.

“Happy seventeen!”


	8. Unusual Pet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some horrendous truths about the settlement surface. A bit of AU in terms of a certain gadget, but it doesn't affect the story at all.

“No way! Is this...? No fucking way!”

Ellie dismantled the box gingerly, eyes shining like the twin suns of Sirius.

“Whoa...”

Inside was a brand-new PS5. It was a Batman Arkham Knight gunmetal special edition console with two controllers, one corroded plum and the other corroded lime green, each one emblazoned with the Batman logo on the right grip. Since it was a bundle, it came with the Batman Arkham Knight game and the remastered versions of Batman Arkham Asylum, Arkham City and Arkham Origins all on disc. But Joel had used his superhero Joel powers to put together a collection for Ellie, as follows:

Dying Light 1 and 2  
Journey 1 and 2  
Half-life 2 + Episodes 1 and 2 and Half-Life 3  
Portal, Portal 2 and Portal 3  
Rocket League  
Savage Starlight 1, 2, and 3  
Angel Knives Redux  
Horizon: Zero Dawn  
Infamous Second Son + First Light  
Uncharted 1, 2, 3 and 4  
Bioshock, Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite  
The Last Guardian  
Nether  
Ether One  
Tom Clancy's The Division  
Tomb Raider  
Mario Kart 8  
Splatoon  
I Am Alive  
Sonic Colors  
Minecraft  
Need for Speed  
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

“This is insane!!!” Ellie pored over the fine print on the back of each disc case, not understanding half the terms, not knowing what to say, where to begin. “Joel...”

Meanwhile, Joel was hooking up the system to their flatscreen TV and the power outlet. He turned on the TV and then the console.

**Please press the PS button on the controller.**

Joel sat on the sofa beside Ellie and held in front of her the plum-colored controller.

“See this? This is the PS button. This is the R1 button. R2. L1. L2. R3 – you just press down the right stick. L3 – press down the left stick. Usually, you shoot with the R2 button, move around with the left stick and look around with the right stick. Triangle, square, circle, x: these are for jumping, reloading, interacting with your environment. Touch pad: this is usually for accessing the menu or interacting with the environment. Directional buttons: up, down, left, right – for choosing your weapons. Share – well, you won't be usin' it much. Options: you access the game's basic functions. It's a little complicated at first, but you'll get used to it. Just remember, every game uses all these buttons differently.”

“Oh man oh man....!!!”

“So what do you wanna try first?”

“Savage Starlight!”

“Uh, you might wanna stay away from that for now, I heard it's pretty brutal.”

“Then what?”

“Try Uncharted. It's got lotsa adventure.”

“Awesome! Does it have dinosaurs?”

“Uh, no.”

Joel slid the disc into the console.

**Installing...**

“Oh man...!” Ellie's heart was pounding so hard she felt queasy. She wiggled her toes nervously.

Joel went about his business, skinning the potatoes, sweeping the floor, scrubbing the toilet. He could hear Ellie slapping her thighs and yelling.

“Move! Why won't he move?..... Oh, okay.... Oh my God, this thing's shaking in my hands!... What? I didn't even do anything.... What? Where?... Eat this!... Jump, Nate, what the fuck!... Pick up the gun! Pick up the damn gun!... Now where do I go?... Hmmmm, this Nate's kinda hot.... I'm stuck! Joel, are you sure this thing is working?... I died?!... Where am I? I'm not even in the game!... Here we go... Deeestroyed you!… You gotta be shitting me!”

He gave a small chuckle. _Her ankle's swollen like hell, and she's so happy!_

A few days into her gaming, Ellie regained some of her composure. She recovered enough of her awareness to ask Joel.

“How do you know so much about video games?”

“Uh, Sarah and I used to play together.”

“I thought you hated games.”

“Only the violent ones.”

“Oh. So you played all these games?”

“Some.”

“So, do we, like, need two TVs and two consoles to play together?”

“No. Well, in some cases, that'd be called online multiplayer, but we don't got internet so it won't work.”

“Internet?”

“It's, uh, a network of computers sharin' information across the world. In gamin' terms, this meant that you could play with people from all over the world.”

“Nellie! So, like, I could play with people in China? Or Africa?”

“That's right.”

“Could you see those people on the screen?”

“If you both wanted to.”

“Huh. Now I'm incredibly jealous.”

“Life back then had its advantages. But this is good, too, I reckon.”

“Only if you play with me,' said Ellie in her low, throaty, mischief-inducing voice, smiling brightly.

“And who's gonna do the work, genius?” chuckled Joel.

“Not us!” declared Ellie, exerting her God-given right to loiter.

“Alright, what's your poison?”

“What's my what?”

“What do you wanna play?”

“What do you recommend?”

“I say Rocket League.”

“Bring it!”

“How's your ankle?”

“What? Oh, it's fine.”

“Then you do the dishes.”

“What the fuck!”

By the middle of May, Ellie was sadly well enough to go to school again. She floated on clouds. Her eyes might have been puffy from lack of sleep and her butt might have been sore as hell, but she felt insanely energized. So many wonderful stories, so many characters, the visuals, the soundtracks, the freedom to explore! The choices she made that affected the whole outcome! And the vibration of the controller, that was beyond awesome. 

Video games. Riley came to mind. It made Ellie uncomfortable. Somehow, Riley didn't fit into this picture, and yet there she was, hovering in a corner of her brain, too visible, too intrusive. Ellie hadn't touched Angel Knives Redux. The PS5 was Ellie and Joel's thing. The unexpected distance Ellie felt toward Riley troubled her, but she'd been letting Riley go for a while now. It didn't feel like betrayal, more like the strength to admit that much of it had been youthful folly. Riley didn't seem all that overwhelmingly extraordinary to her anymore. She'd abandoned her. Whatever else she'd done afterwards, coming back, taking her to the mall, giving her the water guns, those were things Riley'd done mostly for herself. The fact remained that she'd left, without a word, letting Ellie worry herself sick, letting her mourn and grieve, breaking her heart. _That's not what real friends do. That's not something Joel would ever do. He never makes me feel needy._

Her first Survival class after the twisted ankle proved to be a challenge. She'd been lounging in front of the TV for a full month, moving only when she had to go to the bathroom, to bed, and more recently, to complete some dreary chore Joel made up for her. “Move it!” he'd say, snatching the controller from her hands. It was barely visible, but she'd packed on a few pounds. 

Today's class was a novelty for Ellie in other ways as well. They were going to learn about strategy and team work. In an abandoned 3-storey mansion at the edge of town, stations, outposts and lookouts were set up. Each student would take turns manning one of these positions. The outdoor team would mount an attack, and the indoor team would defend. Since the rest of the class had been training for a full three weeks, Ellie had a lot to keep track of: secure the windows, maintain and unobstructed visual field by shifting position, maintain stealth at all times, never stay in one spot for too long. Her year on the road with Joel – _and The Division!_ \- had helped her consolidate an instinctive feel for the most effective ambush patterns and counterattacks, but she still felt sluggish and weak. _Gotta take it easy with those games, huh, Joel?_

“Alright, gather round, everyone. Let's recap. What would a non-infected do if they were trapped in this space?” Mr. Harran was pointing to the hallway between the bathroom and the study on the ground floor.

Craig raised his hand.

“Go ahead.”

“He'd back up into the study.”

“And the reason is?”

“The study is bigger, there's a window, and chances are there's more light even during night time.”

“Good. Any other ideas?”

Nobody had any.

“Moving on. What is an infected likely to do if it gets inside this space over here?” Mr. Harran was now pointing to the middle of the living room.

“You'll have to ask Ellie,” quipped Morgan. Everyone laughed hysterically. 

_What. A. Bitch._

“Now now, settle down,” said Mr. Harran, frankly annoyed. The job was eating at his health. _No wonder the guy's playing hookie all the time. I know I would. Wait, I do._

Ellie raised her hand.

“Yes, Ellie?”

“An infected is always more drawn to the small objects, whether they're moving or not. It would probably head for the TV.”

“Excellent. Any other ideas? No? Then let's move on to the next exercise.”

Craig, Morgan and Marcus were whispering to each other jeering at Ellie. _Creeps._

It was Ellie's turn to guard the basement. The moment Mr. Harran blew his whistle, everyone stopped talking. 

Listening. Squinting. Feeling the air currents on the skin. Listening some more. Crawling. Turning around to make sure nobody on the outdoor team was sneaking up. Listening again.

The basement was pitch-dark. There was a dank smell of pickles and rotten meat emanating from the moldy walls. Ellie was watching the trap door above her, hands firmly gripping the paintball rifle.

From somewhere in the basement came a muffled sucking sound, like a plunger on a carpet, and a few moments later the unmistakable click-click-click.

_FUCK!_

Ellie froze. She had no real weapons on her, not even her switchblade. Students were prohibited from carrying weapons to school. She struggled to see in the dark but couldn't make out any shapes.

Click-click-click.

Suddenly the clicker gave a berserk scream and lunged at her, slashing her face with its mindlessly flailing arms.

“Help!”

The clicker sank its teeth into her shoulder, its iridescent arms immobilizing her torso like a vise. Gnashing her teeth from the pain, she pulled up her knee between herself and the clicker, making enough room for her to lower herself onto the floor, pull up the other foot, plant it on the clicker's throat and shove it off of her. As she scuttled backward, she bumped her head on the ladder she had to use to climb up. It was standing against the wall.

“Help!”

The trap door opened, letting in light. The clicker was after her again, she couldn't stay still long enough to take the ladder and secure it onto the latches in the ceiling. Mr. Harran fired a couple of revolver shots through the trap door. The clicker fell to the floor with a thump.

“Ellie, are you alright?!”

“Yeah, I'm fine. Please get me up!”

“I'm coming down.”

Mr. Harran jumped down into the basement. He helped Ellie onto her feet, secured the ladder at the trap door opening, and helped Ellie climb. Her shoulder was bleeding profusely.

“Lewis?” he shouted from the basement.

“”Yes?”

“Do you know where Ellie lives?”

“I guess so, yeah.”

“Go there and get Mr. Miller. Pronto!”

“Okay.”

“I'm gonna check things down here.”

Mr. Harran turned on his flashlight and walked around the basement. Dead clicker, very small, probably originating in a 10-year-old child. Blue dress. Probably a girl. This was impossible. He had checked every inch of the house the day before, like he always did before a lesson. He kept looking around. In one corner stood an old refrigerator. He hadn't seen it before. There was a rope leading from the handle, through an elaborate rig, to a hole in the ceiling. The rope was designed to do one thing: open the refrigerator door.

Mr. Harran had seen enough. He climbed up.

“Ellie, dear, how are you doing?”

“Super. Can I go home?”

“Mr. Miller'll be here any second. He'll take you home. Listen, I don't know how this happened I'm going to find out. Okay?”

“Whatever.” Ellie was in no mood to allow herself to be comforted. She watched Craig, Morgan and Marcus snickering openly in front of her.

Joel came running in.

“What happened?!”

“There was a clicker in the basement. It got Ellie, but she made it,” said Mr. Harran, extremely flustered.

“Baby...,” huffed Joel, taking Ellie's hands. He winced at the sight of her oozing wound. He took off his T-shirt, folded it into a 6-inch square and pressed it against Ellie's shoulder. Ellie wasn't paying attention. She was staring at Craig, frowning.

“Craig, did you do this?” Joel asked, narrowing his eyes. “Answer me!”

“It's not like she can get sick or anything,” Craig snorted.

“She can still get hurt!”

“It was one itty-bitty clicker. She can handle it. All those fancy moves?” Craig laughed. Morgan and Marcus joined in. Morgan's eyes were burning a hole into Joel's hairy chest.

“Craig, where's your father?”

“Out hunting.”

Joel nodded, barely able to refrain from slapping the three in the face till they got a nosebleed.

“C'mon, Ellie.”

As soon as they got home, Joel put a lot of water on the stove to boil. He rapidly took out from the drawers everything he needed: gauze, tape, iodine, alcohol, sewing kit, tetracycline ointment. He helped Ellie out of her T-shirt and took her to the bathroom. He tried to wash just the shoulder but her bra and jeans became soaking wet.

“Kid, how 'bout you take a proper bath? When you're done I'll stitch you up.”

“Okay.” Ellie did as she was told. _Endure and survive._ Her pliancy sent Joel into a mild panic.

_Now it's getting' physical. She ain't safe no more. We gotta leave. But Tommy. He's feelin' better, but for how long? No, it's gotta be Ellie. We're leavin'._

_No we're not._

_Yes, we are. You gave Maria the recipe, there ain't no reason to stay._

_No, Joel. This was a stupid one-off thing. We gotta help Tommy and Maria. I may have to tweak the cure depending on how Tommy does._

_You're in danger. Brother or no, I ain't havin' that._

_You don't mean that. I'm sure he saved your ass more than once back in the day._

_And I saved his. We're square. It don't matter anyway._

_Remember when you said you wanted to give me a choice? The fact that Tommy and Maria gave us a place to live made that choice possible._

_Alright. But not one minute longer than we have to._

Joel drew up new rules. No more school. No talking to Stewart or his boys. If Ellie needed to go somewhere, Joel would have to go with her. So far, Ellie was liking every one of the new rules.

Word got to Tommy and Maria. They cut Joshua Stewart's electricity and running water for a month. Craig and Marcus were suspended from school for the remainder of the semester. Further investigation revealed that the clicker was Esther Pullman's daughter Lillian, who'd gone missing four years ago. Craig and Marcus had found her infected and had kept her in a shed. The lacerations on her body pointed to sustained torture. 

Tommy asked Maria if she wanted to leave together with Joel and Ellie. She flung her arms around her husband and held him tight.

“Thank you!”

He told Perry, the guy at the body shop, to repair the mini-van as soon as possible: a big haul was due to come in a week from now.


	9. Visualization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter in this volume. A sequel is coming. :)

Another fine day in May. A few feathery clouds lining the blue sky, a bit of a breeze, the sun not too bright. Ellie was hanging the laundry to dry in the backyard. Joel was at Tommy's ironing out the escape plan for the four of them. Which supplies to take. Which guns to take. What route to take. How to fool the townsfolk into believing they had nothing to chase, nobody to hunt down for sport. It was going to be sweet. That mini-van in the repair shop was practically an RV, minus the toilet and the fridge. They'd have plenty of room for her books, her console, her chess set, Olivia. _Oh no! I hadn't thought about that! Oh no... This is turning out to be another shitty day. I can't leave Olivia._ She flung the last pair of Joel's boxers on the line and rushed to the front yard to get to the stall.

Morgan was leaning into the gate, arms crossed over the top of it, the forged metal work eating into her large boobs.

_Ugh._

“What is it?” snapped Ellie. 

“Just visiting.”

“Shove off.”

“That's not polite.”

“Look, I know you planted that welding gun.”

“You got me. It must be that fine sense of hearing.” Morgan giggled.

“Bugger off.”

“Or else what?”

“Look, Morgan, I'm not in the mood. What do you want?”

“I want to see Mr. Miller.”

“What about?”

“I want to tell him something.”

“Tell it to me and I'll make sure he hears it.”

“It's none of your business.”

_Mr. Miller, huh? Alright._

“Maybe you can catch him later.”

“I'll be back.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“Bye.” Morgan unclasped herself from the gate and turned to leave.

“When you see him, just don't wear that pink number you wore in class.”

Morgan spun back around. Ellie wasn't sure where she was going with this, but she had to play her gambit. It might be her last chance to get Morgan back for all the heartache.

“Why not?”

“He won't stop talking about it.”

_Should I be telling her lies about Joel? And trashy ones at that? I can tell her even bigger lies about myself, Joel will look like a saint. We'll be out of here in a few days. She can go fuck herself. But first I gotta make sure which playing field I'm on._

“Does he talk about me?”

“That's all he does. I'm sick of it. I can't even get him to... you know.”

“What?”

“I don't know if I should be telling you this.”

“What?”

“Have you, like, done it? With a guy?”

“Of course not. I wear a purity bracelet.”

“A what?”

“A purity bracelet. As long as I wear it, I'm not supposed to. My mom gave it to me.”

“Why don't you take it off? You must want to.”

“I don't. Nice girls don't do that.” Morgan's tits were practically fusing with the gate now.

_So, neither of us knows about this stuff. Not really. Excellent._

“Oh. Well, I don't have one. I've been doing it for years. Joel and I must have humped more than 600 times already.”

Morgan was livid.

“You... sleep with him?”

“Duh! Well, I used to, until you came along.”

Morgan's eyes were beginning to glaze over.

“You're such a slut...,” she sniggered in disgust.

“Hey, it passes the time. It makes you popular, I can tell you that. I never went hungry in the QZ.” _The times I had to will myself to sleep, ignoring a gaping hole in my stomach..._

“How... is he?”

“Joel? He's fine.”

“No, I mean.... in bed.”

“Aaah, so now I've got your attention. That's alright, girl, nothing to be ashamed of. How he is in bed? Man, that's tough to explain. He's a.... monster.”

“Oh?” Morgan was appalled. Even her salaciousness was clumsy.

“He walks around the house stark naked, for one. Why do you think we've had to cover all the windows? People were seeing things.”

“I never heard anything.”

“That's because you're wearing that bracelet. People respect you, they know not to talk trash in front of you.”

_Holy tamale, if she buys any of this, she's more stupid than I gave her credit for._

“Oh.”

“He sometimes does this thing where his cock gets so hard he hoists me onto it, you know, like you stick a bottle on a rack to dry. He walks around the house with me, like, impaled on it. I have my back turned toward him, my feet don't even touch the ground, and he holds me by my pony tail and thrusts really hard. He can go for hours. I, like, jiggle in midair, it's loads of fun. Makes me come real hard too.”

_Dude, am I going overboard? Poor girl's practically drooling._

“Why are you telling me this?” Something was telling Morgan this might be a trap. _Phew, she's got at least one neuron working._

“To make you jealous.”

“Slut. Wait, Mr. Miller is also immune?”

“Don't think so. I'm pretty sure he mentioned having been checked for immunity back in Boston, and the test came out negative.” This part was true.

“Isn't it risky, then? Sleeping with you?”

_Awww, concern for old Joel._

“Nah. We've done it so many times every which way, he'd have turned by now. But I don't bite him or anything. I'm supercareful. I mean, a guy like that, who knows how to give proper cock, you gotta treat well, you know. They're rare. The first time was kinda scary, though. We didn't know he'd be alright.”

“How did it happen?” Morgan had that inscrutable smirk on her face again. Ellie knew she was on thin ice, but she couldn't stop herself.

“Oh, I was taking a bath. We were in the middle of the desert, the rain was pouring like mad, the camp fire was roaring, and Joel was chopping some oak.”

_No reaction. Lordy. Maybe she doesn't know about deserts. This could be a cheap shot. Oh well._

“He had his back turned toward me. He was dripping wet from head to toe. You've seen his back, right? He looked so damn hot I started playing with myself. He was doing his thing, chopping the wood, when he heard me squealing, so he came up to me and said it's always a pity to waste a good fuck so he did me right then and there in the sand. Boy, I'll never forget the size of that thing. I mean, I'd had a lot of guys before, but this... let's just say it was a struggle for me to get it in. It's got these huge veins bulging out, it's really scary-looking, actually. And the sounds he makes, God, sometimes I come just listening to him.”

_Thank you, Bearskin magazine!_

“Oh.” Morgan began squeezing her legs tight.

“Yeah. I remember another time, when we were in this abandoned hotel, he was in a frisky mood and I was having a head ache. We'd fought a bunch of hunters and we were doing really poorly with our headshots for some reason. I told him to pull himself together, but he wanted his pussy, so I said he can have it if he can jump from across the room and land with his cock inside in a single try. I lay on the bed, spread my legs as far apart as I could, you know, to give him a fair chance. He went out into the corridor and started sprinting toward me. He jumped into the air right at the end of the bed, somersaulted, and landed with his cock in my pussy. 10 out of 10.”

“Wow...”

_Facepalm, facepalm, facepalm...._

“Look, I'm telling you because I know for a fact he's gonna ask you out. You've gotta be prepared. We may be enemies, you and I, but we're also both girls. That guy is the best fuck you'll have in ten lifetimes, but he's also a wolf. Treat him well and he'll send you to heaven each time. Now buzz off, I don't wanna see you.”

Morgan walked away in a daze, her gait terminally tottering. _Oh, Morgan... You're welcome._ Ellie chuckled and went to Olivia.

Next day, around noon, rain broke out. Beautiful early summer storm, one of those cascades sent by whoever was supposed to be watching over humanity, was forgetting to water the plants, and was drenching the flower pot once a century. It felt like a vigorous soul cleanse. _Maybe that's what God's supposed to do. Give you little nudges and hints now and then. Or really big shoves once an eon. All sublte-like. Imagine a world where a good heart was handed to everyone on a platter. Yeeeek!_

“Livvie, it looks like I'm gonna have to leave you.”

Olivia nodded. Her coat was auburn, flaming like those autumn leaves Joel loved so much.

“I know I'm being a jerk. I'm so sorry. You're just too little. You'd break if we rode you. Well, if Joel hopped on you you would, that's for sure. You were gonna be the best campaign horse in the apocalypse. You and I were gonna conquer back the Earth together.”

Olivia blinked, giving a light huff.

“But the folks here'll take good care of you. Don't you worry. Unless they decide to make sausages out of you. I'm kidding. You're a cool chick. You'll do well.”

Seeing Olivia's wet nostrils quiver, Ellie teared up. No amount of joking could erase the fact that she loved this horse, that it was her baby, that Joel had built this stall for her with his bare hands. She'd poured her purest love into caring for Olivia, the same kind she had for Joel. She'd spent hours and hours talking to her, sorting out her thoughts near her. It tore her apart to leave her in a place like this.

“Grab her!”

Two guys grabbed Ellie, one by the arms, one by the legs.

“Let me go, you fucks!”

“Easy, easy! Looks like we've got ourselves a fiery one, eh, Bry? Now give daddy some of that sweet pussy you've been giving that old man. We hear you know how to work a shaft.”

“Go fuck yourself!”

“That wouldn't be as much fun, would it?”

The guy who wasn't Bry was making sucking noises with his chapped lips as he stuffed a dirty handkerchief into Ellie's mouth. His stubby fingers were digging into her thighs, groping her pussy. He unzipped her fly and pulled down her jeans. Ellie was kicking and squirming, but she couldn't stop him from pulling down her panties.

“Look ye here, Bry, young pink pussy just waiting for cock. Relax, missy, you'll enjoy it more.”

The guy unzipped his fly. Ellie was contorting her body frantically, her muted screams lost in the torrential rain.

“It's alright, it's alright, you don't have to be so eager. If we all knew you can't pass on the bug, we'd have done you long ago. Now if you're nice, we'll even let you kiss little daddy. You'd like that, wouldn't you?”

"Come on, man, hurry up, I'm reaching my peak!" squirmed Bry. 

Ellie flung her knees wide apart. The guy stared straight into her pussy, enthralled. She lifted her legs, scissored his neck between her ankles and squeezed with every ounce of strength she had. The guy's neck snapped and he fell to the floor. Bry dropped her and tried to hurl himself over her. She scuttled back on all fours, grabbed the pitch fork and threw it like a javelin.

She put on her panties and jeans and ran out of the stall.

_This is bad. Gotta find Joel._

She dashed to Tommy's, globs of water pelting her.

“Joel! Joel!”

He and Tommy were in the storeroom, taking stock of the canned goods that were set to go into the mini-van.

“What is it?!”

“You better come quick.”

When she returned to the stall with Joel, she found the two men exactly as she'd left them.

“Christ! What happened?!”

“They tried to rape me.”

“Did they...?”

“No.”

Joel pulled the two bodies deep into the stall past Olivia, yanked the pitchfork from Bry's rib cage and covered the two bodies with hay.

“Inside. Get our gear. Bare minimum. Be right back.”

He was out before Ellie could yell, “What about Tommy and Maria?”

Ellie threw her things into her backpack: meds, natural remedies book, change of clothes, soap, Rocket League, pistol ammo, two cans of beans, jar of blueberry jam, aluminum pot, flint and steel, bottle of fresh water. She threw Joel's stuff into his backpack: three packs of rice, a pack of lentils, gauze, rope, a jar of honey, El Diablo ammo, shotgun bucks, hunting rifle ammo, revolver ammo, ten arrows, change of clothes, bottle of fresh water, Ellie's snow globe.

_Adios, ladies! Goodbye, Livvie..._

Joel came back riding Atlas, his favorite horse in the town stable. It was a dapple gray stallion, a work horse with unparalleled stamina. He dismounted; she handed him his backpack, his El Diablo, shotgun, bow, hunting rifle and Smith&Wesson. He handed her the Jak goggles.

“Wha...?!”

“Get on.”

Thunder, lightning and the good Lord's mighty tides wiping sin off the Earth.

Joel and Ellie reached the gate, completely drenched. The guard shouted over the din.

“You folks going out? At a time like this?”

“Yeah, we've got a drop to make. We're late.”

“Alright. Stay safe.”

“You too.”

The gate opened.

“You good?” asked Joel, looking over his shoulder.

“I'm good,” Ellie answered, holding on to the top of his backpack.

“Hang on tight.”

**Author's Note:**

> The more I think about it, the more I feel that what Joel and Ellie have together is so unique that even a community like Tommy's isn't going to get used to their presence. This volume will have a sequel. :)


End file.
